Book Launch Special Episode | Managing Stress with Dr Ash & Kim Peterson Stone

Hi, Ash. I am so glad you made the time. I know you're busy. Your schedule is just so crazy this time of year, and I'm so glad you made the time to sit down and have a chat with us today. How are things going?

Thank you, Kim. Thank you for having me here today. Things are going great. And as I shared with you, I'm excited that I've been able to launch my first book, The Boiling Frog.

Yes, yes. I cannot believe the speed with which you have been able to put things together. We've been working together for a few months now, and in that short period of time, you have gone from concept to goal to finished, you know, checking off goal after goal after goal, and you are just absolutely on fire. So tell us about the book. I know the workbook was really impressive. I mean, the workbook was just there was so much content in that book. and now you're following it up with the actual book. So tell us about how you came to the concept in the first place and why the workbook book, how they work together, and who could benefit from learning from all the knowledge that you're sharing there.

So, Kim, the reason I published the workbook first was that I understand that this book is for professionals who are in high stress professions. And I wanted to simplify things. So in the workbook, there are 25 or so illustrations. And if somebody just goes through those illustrations and reads the explanations, they will be able to get the concepts.

Yeah.

In just half an hour, 10 minutes to 15 minutes for the introduction, and then go through the illustrations. And then he drops for them, and they know that really they want to shift something inside them. Now, initially the project was to get the book first, but I got inspired to take a right brain approach. The right the right hemisphere of the brain is more responsive for responsible for intuition, imagery. You know, you might have heard the penny drops. Suddenly you get an insight. So I thought this is a great starting point to help people understand where they are. Yeah and they are stressed, what's causing them stress. And in the book, then I take them into a deeper journey, and it has a unique dual strategy to manage the stress. So coming from the right brain, the illustrations are there, and also there are stories, stories to illustrate the concepts. And all of the stories are short, 400 to 500 words, which means they can be read in two to three minutes, and somebody reads it, gets the concept. Further, the illustrations speak to the same concept. Now, from the left side of the brain, the left prefrontal cortex, which is more important for execution, is known as the CEO of the brain, the executive center. Now, in stress, what happens is that people live in their limbic system. Yeah, amygdala, and the CEO, the CEO of the brain is not working. So I have given the neuroscientific evidence to every skill in the book. So it's a very comprehensive dual strategy to hone in the concepts of stress management and chronic stress and what it does to us.

I love that so much. And I've gotta say a lot of what we do is work with people who are very left-brained. So medicine, engineering, invention, and in the in the real world, they are doing amazing things, but they're not able to paint the picture, which is the marketing, the PR, the personal branding. How do you turn this amazing concept into something that people can take bite-sized pieces and take away? And it sounds like what you've done, Ash, is you have said, okay, whether you're right-brained or left brain, whether you have, you know, 60 seconds or you really want to dive into a book and really analyze how to improve upon yourself, you've kind of got something for everyone. And you've got something you've you've you've drawn from your vast experience, which we didn't even start with, which we really need to kind of, this would be a good segue. You know, why did you create this series? Why did you create the Boiling Frog series? And what is your background? Because that will even give people an additional aha or insight as to why you would be the person they really want to align with and learn from in helping to manage their own stressful situations.

Kim, thank you. I mean, I mean I'll rather have a long-winded answer to this question. the first is I have been a physician for 25 plus years, and I am a consultant in general internal medicine. Now, more than a decade back, I saw that there was a huge amount of burnout stress in the healthcare profession. In the United States itself, studies after studies are showing that nearly two-thirds 60% plus of the healthcare workers are suffering from chronic stress and burnout.

Yeah. It's terrible.

Also, during my career as a physician, I've seen pretty much nearly a lot of professions where there is a huge amount of stress, and you deal with professionals from coming from different backgrounds. I've had patients from different streams, whether they are IT, whether they are corporate, even teachers, police, first-line responders, ambulance crews with high levels of stress. Gallup is an organization, Kim, which does annual statistics of burnout and chronic stress, and they say nearly forty-three percent of the population, working population, is suffering from burnout chronic stress. So that's a huge proportion of our workforce. Just imagine the financial losses because of that.

Finance, time, health, connection, all of those things suffer.

And what is the engagement of these employees who are burnt out? How is it affecting the customers? How it is affecting the customer experiences. So when I heard about this boiling frog analogy in the context of healthcare, and I learned that the healthcare environment is being compared to a boiling frog environment. Where have you heard of the boiling frog environment, Kim? Boiling frog analogy.

Where the where the frog is just comfortable and the water keeps getting hotter and hotter and they just continue to boil without jumping out.

Yes. Exactly. So same way the chronic stress goes under the radar and people do not realize what has happened, and then suddenly they realize that they have got psych some kind of a psychosomatic disease. Some people have more severe manifestations, like they might have a heart attack, they might have mental health issues, they might have depression, they might have severe anxiety, diabetes, hypertension, all different manifestations of chronic, undiagnosed, and unmanaged stress. Now, I wanted to bring all this together and I wanted to create a framework which helps people to first manage themselves. That's why the first section of the book is the self-management. We are working in very challenging environments, especially post-COVID. So I wanted to talk about how to build how to build better resilience. Then I wanted to talk about how do you manage this environment, environmental management. And finally, whether we have authentic leadership. Are we leading from our highest values? Because if because you might have heard of this concept of moral injury, when we are working in a situation which kind of really jars with our highest and deepest values, causes moral injury. And that can cause burnout. So I have created a framework which can be applied by professionals in any high stress professions or anybody because burnout is a human condition, it's a human phenomena where there is unreasonable, high amounts of toxic, unregulated, mismanaged stress.

Yeah. I and I love the accountability aspect that you lean into in the book, just in the beginning of the book, because so much of the stress and burnout are created by circumstances outside of our control. Right? You mentioned COVID, you mentioned the environment that you may be working in that you don't have complete control over. You don't have complete control over economics or global whatever's going on, you know, geopolitically. But you do have control over you should you choose to go that route. However, that's easier said than done, right? It's easier to say, well, just shrug it off and you know, whatever the case may be. But having tools and a framework to your point to actually work through. I mean, I love in the workbook that you address the boiling frog and the jacuzzi analogy. So can you maybe like talk about that a little bit as to how that really is helpful when you're managing stress in the moment to just to kind of shift perspective?

Yes, absolutely, Kim. so Kim, the first is the understanding of the environment. And I talk about micro stresses, how micro stresses in the environment can increase the temperature of the water and cause it a boiling frog environment. Now, this might be because of a conflict with colleagues, conflict with your management. It might be because of being in situations where you feel your values are not resonating with the values of the environment. You feel that your identity is not identity and your highest values are not being served in a particular environment. So there are multitudes of reasons which cause that daily forces which come and they create these micro stresses and a kind of a catabolic environment. Now, on a more positive note, and this comes from fundamentally from the law of physics, and you see in nature that in every environment, every situation, any kind of a force, whether it is negative or positive, every force there is an equal and opposite equal and opposite force to that. To every electron, there is a proton. So if there are situations or factors in an environment which are causing a stress, like somebody you see comes and you feel the heat, there's a dysfunction, but with somebody, a colleague or somebody, you can feel the heat coming.

I did like a toxic person or an energy vampire or whatever the case may be. Yeah.

Exactly. So what is shared in the book that can you leverage in an environment a positive factor? Now you and me, you and me have been working together for more than three months now, and there has been a really beautiful synergy in the work we have done. Would you agree with that?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

Now, can I demonstrate to you a jacuzzi effect what it is exactly?

Yes, please.

Okay, so we were planning to meet today at 11 a.m. And if I were to ask you at this point of time, name the four positive emo four emotions you are feeling at this point of time, what would you say to that? And then I will answer you this question as well. In the in this moment or in the end of the yeah, in this in this in this moment right now, what are the four emotions you are feeling?

I'm grateful. very grateful, very thankful that we have the ability to work in environments that we can choose. I am very honored and glad that we have this relationship that we can help one another and move things forward and help so many other people in the process. That's wonderful. I'm excited about the prospects for the future. I know that there's a lot of really good things going on. and I'm I'm I'm I guess it's grateful again that you know, whenever there's like a little bit of a hiccup, because we deal with time differences, we deal with travel schedules, we deal with, and there's been hiccups and stumbles, but we just you know pick it right back up and off we go. So all in all, just very grateful, thankful, humbled, all those things. Thank you.

Thank you. So you have mentioned gratitude, you have mentioned joy, you have mentioned connection and excitement. And likewise for me, I'm very grateful that we have created this and we are connecting. I have got I was very excited for the podcast today. I'm very joyful. We are creating something which can help so many people who are in high space. So there is that feeling of contribution, that feeling of growth, that feeling of meaning that we are doing something meaningful. Yeah, that feeling of connection, that feeling of gratitude. So the jacuzzi effect is bringing that awareness to the present moment. And what are those positive emotions, acknowledging them? Then we go a step ahead. We bring in intentionality. Yeah, how can I how can I how can I create those moments and more of those moments and more of those moments in a particular day? And in the healthcare, I think we meet so many people, patients, relatives, families, colleagues, and in other professions, there are there are colleagues, you're working in teams. It comes with the premise that there has to be, there has to be equal amount of positive factors. And I'll tell you the tell you the reason behind this has to be. I've been very inspired by this book, Man's Search for Meaning Kim, which was written by Victor Frankel. And Victor Frankel writes this account in the Holocaust, and he talks about the people who were who are surviving and the people who between the stimulus and the response there is a space, and in this space they could exercise their choice. Yeah. So if people could do that in the Holocaust, can we not aspire? Yes, can we not get us inspired to do in this particular moment in our environment?

I ultimately so love that. No, continue. I'm sorry. No, no, but absolutely say please go ahead. That again comes back to accountability, and there's a lot of speak about other people doing things to people, like it's my boss's fault, it's my coworker's fault, it's my, you know, whatever. There's a lot of that. Now I'm not saying that some of those conversations are not valid, but you just address, and particularly with Victor Frankel's work, I mean, my gosh, talk about having everything taken away from you, and yet you still have created for yourself the ability to pause and to take a moment to reassess so that your mindset is where it needs to be to deal with the situation at hand, which is unbelievably powerful. People we need to take our power back. You know, this helps people take their power back from difficult situations, which I think is you really can't put a price tag on that. That really impacts so many different industries, so many different industries where people work. If people can just take their own power back internally and take that moment to pause, that would change a lot of things.

Yes, Kim. And that's exactly that taking back the power, that self-accountability is what is required for creating that jacuzzi effect, which means that if the temperature is increasing, first of all, we have taken the accountability to be aware of what's happening. First of all, what is happening inside this between these two years, what is my inner state, what is my emotional state, moment to moment, what is my as I demonstrated to you that whenever we meet, there is this between when whenever you and me meet, there is this creativity, there is this connection, there is this wanting to contribute, of to learn, to share, to grow, to create that meaning and that shared joy. So bringing more bringing more intentionality to the things, what we are doing, being in this present moment, fully engaged. Rather than, you know, I'm there with you, but I'm thinking something else. I'm thinking something.

You know, I'll even I'll even say something that I've always done, and I've I've owned, you know, I've started several companies and always with the intention of making something better, right? Whatever the industry is, like, hey, there's something broken here, I think we could do it better. But inevitably, you're going to get people that you work with in no m no matter what, where they're difficult people, right? They're mad about something that you know something's going on. And I would I would consider it a challenge to turn someone who is unbelievably unhappy about whatever the case may be and turn them into our biggest fan. And I almost, it was very rare that we would get somebody that was, you know, super mad about something. But when we did, I was like, oh good. Now I now I get to work my magic and see if I could flip it around. And nine times out of ten, I would be able to do that because I would hear them, you know, if it and validate they've they've been heard and you know, try to try to you know put their positioning in exactly what happened, maybe you know, it give some clarity around the situation. But considering things a challenge rather than an attack, because when you think you're being attacked, when you think the circumstances are attacking you, you have no control, you have no power, well then you're defeated. But the thing is, you do have the power, you do have the power with just a little shift in mindset, which you address so eloquently, which I can only imagine, you know, if this is something that's taught to a team, for example, what a huge impact that can make on the internal team, on how they communicate with one another and externally. You know how that there's a management saying that you need to hire slow and fire fast, because if someone is on your team that is a cancer, that is, you know, they're always complaining and they're whining and they're just like, ugh, you know, they can't be, they can't be coached out of it. That's the negative energy that squashes that positive energy. But if everybody was trained to have these tools so that's what they went to first, that would really avoid a lot of issues with that. So issues with internal employees, issues with client communication. Just I'm a big fan of avoiding the problem in the first place than having to fix a problem. It just is much, a much more smooth way and a less stressful way to run your life. It's been my personal experience. So, can you speak to that a little bit about how, you know, maybe some experience you've had in helping to direct teams or helping to educate team members on how to work together more impactfully by, you know, to taking advantage of some of the neuroscience aspects of things that you've uncovered.

Yeah, thank you, Kim. I mean, to what you have just said just now, in the chapter of in the section of the value management, there is a chapter known as scanning safety and strategy. and what you very correctly said that you like to see what's happening, like what are the patterns, because leaders anticipate, losers react. So you are able to see the patterns, so pattern recognition and then pattern. Utilization and what you can do proactively to see that if a particular team work or a particular situation is going to cause us that negative forces. And if you if you want to see that chapter, I think it will be the chapter 18th in the book. We are scanning the environment, we are scanning the wh horizon. And is that particular situation or a person causing affecting our psychological safety? And if yes, what is the strategy? You also mentioned that hire slow and fire fast. That if you realize, of course, with your intuition, with your experience, you have done due diligence, you're getting the right people on board. But sometimes things change, things evolve, and we as humans, we can make wrong judgments. In that case, don't wait too much. Get the dysfunctional force or a person out of the team because it can be very eroding. It can affect it can affect the entire devastating.

Maybe that's it. And instead of being inspired, they're squashed every day. And it's like, why even try? You know, that there's you know whether it's nepotism or you know, whatever, corruption, it doesn't really matter. But these people that want to do well are really not given the opportunity because of someone coming in that isn't a good fit. It's clearly not a good fit. It's not that this person is a horrible person and it's just not a good fit for the culture, and they need to move on to something else. So yeah, so scanning the environment and if you walk into an environment and you feel grateful and happy and excited, then my gosh, sky's the limit. You can do anything, right? You have to you have to we're currently hiring right now, and I tend not to do the typical, tell me about a time when you were mad and you handled it well. You know, I tend not to do those typical questions. I try to find out what lights that person up. Because if I can find that out and I can weave that into the position that we need to fill, we're golden. We're good, we have a match. So that seems to be a real and in turn, if you can light people up just with what they are doing in work, that makes all the difference in the world. So it sounds as if this gives people a roadmap, it gives people a resource, an answer resource, right? Go in and whether it's through pictures or through stories, so that leaders, managers, and business owners can do it better, do it better for their teams, ultimately do it better for their clients, which then of course is going to impact the bottom line. Just everybody wins by having these skills.

Absolutely. Kim, other thing that I would like to say to what you've said that you look for what lights up this person. I've also realized that people can light up only with their strengths. People can soar only with their strengths. So whether they are bringing their best of strengths to a particular environment and on a workplace is also hugely important.

I agree. And if you can lean into strengths and put people in a position where they're always going to feel like they're they're good, they're shining, rather than they're just constantly struggling. So putting someone who is not a forward-facing person who would prefer to be in the background crunching numbers, and you throw that person out front, it's just not going to work. It doesn't matter that the amount of training or coaching, it just isn't going to work. So putting the right person in the right seat and then having the tools to manage when things come up, because that's another thing. How what are your thoughts on this? Difficult conversations need to happen, no matter what, whether it's a marriage or you know, brothers and sisters or family members, whatever. You're going to have to have difficult conversations in order for that relationship to flourish and get through sticking points. So what can you can you share maybe a strategy or tactic or things that you talk about in the book that addresses, you know, somebody who maybe isn't very confrontational and doesn't like having those difficult conversations? Who does, right? But things that you may be able to do from a strategic standpoint to avoid that type of stress, because we all know we need to do it from time to time, how can we make it more palatable and work a little bit better for us?

Yes, Kim, thank you for asking that question. I mean, there are several layers to that. I mean, if one of the things you spoke earlier that when you are dealing with that kind of a high emotional situation, when you are somebody who's unhappy, and then you have these conversations, you acknowledge what the other person is coming with, and then you are able to empathize and engage, and then you are able to come with a solution. Similarly, if we find ourselves in a situation there when we are dealing with dysfunctional colleagues or employee, we have to have these hard conversations, but also we have to be realistic because there are two kinds of people one who are coachable, one who are uncoachable. There are two kinds of people one who have got a growth mindset, one who have got a fixed mindset. So person with growth mindset will say, Oh, Kim, give me more, give me more. You know, okay, I understand that I've made this mistake, I own it to own up to it. What are the things we can do to improve? how should we make it forward? I would like to know my strengths, I would like to know my values, whether I'm in the right environment, how can I do better? On the other hand, somebody who's has a fixed mindset who is non-coachable will get defensive, yeah, will take things personally, and if we know that we are going on a slippery slope there, you'll get that feeling. In that case, I feel you know, we are we won't go very far with arguments, we'll be going around in circles.

Yeah.

And then as you said, that we will need to see when you basically need to do the needful. Yeah. And rather than going into circular conversations, we got to make a hard choice that maybe this environment is not serving this person, and they might be better served somewhere else. or they can be sent for some training. Depends on the context of course.

Coachable and uncoachable. I think you summed it up with that. That's unbelievably helpful. Well, I know that we're pressed for time, and I really appreciate you being so generous with your time and sharing these insights that undoubtedly is going to be unbelievably helpful. You know, whether you're running a business, whether you're in a very high stress environment, first responders to your point, medical. I mean, there's just a lot of people that need a lot of help. So we really do appreciate you spreading the good word. And thank you so much for the follow-up Boiling Frog book. I highly recommend the book and the workbook. and we look forward to the next conversation.

Thank you, Kim. It was really nice speaking with you. And I will put the link to the book here for the reader, listeners, and the readers. Perfect. And it's always inspiring to have a conversation with you, Kim.

Greatly appreciated, Ash. Take care.

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