Michaela:
You did. It's so good to connect with you on the be you find happy podcast. And I know we're going to chat all things, stress relief today. Um, which gosh, is there a better time to talk about that? I'm not sure.
Pete:
Well, Michaela it's so, so, so much of a pleasure to be on your show and to, uh, I appreciate your listeners tuning in.
Michaela:
And, um, I would love for you to share a little bit about, you know, who you are and what you have going on so that the listeners have a little bit of your backstory as well.
Pete:
Sure. So, um, I basically, uh, I started doing stress relief work about two years ago. Uh, it was basically is because I burned out myself with, uh, with work and other responsibilities, but what ended up happening was is that it took 10 years before my body broke down. Um, you know, I, I, I started, uh, noticing stress, having an issue with me about in 2008, basically. Um, it was a perfect storm of stressful activities, culminating, and, and my diagnosis was stress induced diabetes, but I didn't listen to my body about what stress was doing to it. And it took another 10 years of burning the candle at both ends until I ended up in the emergency room. And then, uh, an extended stay in ICU, uh, with, uh, a severe case of diabetic ketoacidosis, which for your listeners who don't know my body was eating itself alive because of my stress. And so I knew I had to, to do something different. And so now I'm not only helping others try and avoid my, my pitfall. And it's, it's a challenging thing because we keep pushing ourselves, especially hard driving leaders who, uh, you know, don't, don't think that it's going to happen to them. And, and I'm trying to, to, to, to help change that, uh, that, uh, thought that it can't happen to you,
Speaker 3:
You know, you're so right. And I think there's so much to stress, and I know that when I'm working with my clients, I show them, you know, kind of like a baseline stress. And then what happens when we escalate stress and then continue on at that escalated stress level as our new baseline and never kind of reset and bring our system back down to true, um, stress reduction levels. And, um, one of the things that I'm really afraid of is, and I've seen this so immensely of late with COVID and, and on this podcast in general, you know, COVID has kind of skirted the surface of dialogue because everything that we're talking about on this podcast is things that people should be doing anyway in the way of improving their quality of life, regardless of whether there's a pandemic floating through the universe. But, um, I think that the, the effect of Corona virus on people's stress levels is going to create a very sick population. Can you talk a little bit about that? What are your thoughts about COVID Corona and everything that's going on in the nation as a pertains to stress right now?
Pete:
Well, you're, you're, you're, uh, right on in terms of, uh, allowing the stress to, to, to, to get to us. I mean, for me, uh, being a diabetic, I, I wear a gluco accommodator that shows me, um, in almost real time, what stress does to me with my glucose numbers. Uh it's it's but, but, but for people who, uh, who don't know that, one of the things that I'm doing with a lot of my clients is I'm trying to help them realize that you can't do anything about COVID in terms of what the government is doing, what your company is doing in terms of responding. You can only take care of yourself. And that's really a fundamental mindset that you have to, to, to realize, because you know, our, our human nature is that we're going to stress about all aspects of a stressful situation, but in reality, there's only a portion of it that we can actually affect change and have control over.
Pete:
So I try and educate people about what, especially with COVID about realizing that, uh, you can't control things that are beyond your control, so she should only control what is in your control. So in other words, the most effective thing you can do there is to realize with COVID, there are two lists. One list is what you can, and one list is what you can't control. So, as I mentioned earlier, the things about COVID, you know, how the government is going to respond, how your company is going to respond, how your coworkers are going to respond, how your family, if you're living, you know, at home and, and you know, you, this is the first time that you've had to spend extended time at home with your, with your, with your family. Those are things that really, um, how other people respond to it. You can't control that, but what you can control is your own mindset, uh, how you deal with it yourself.
Pete:
And the key is when you focus your attention on things that you can control, then you can affect change. And when we feel like we have more of a level of control, our stress goes way, way down, but we really have to stop focusing on everything that's out of our control and, and listening to all the negative that the media likes to cover about this. Because I, you know, I was a marketing major in college, and the fact of the matter is the negativity is what sells ratings. And so if you sit there and you're like, Oh my gosh, more people have died. Oh my gosh, the economy's crashing. Oh my gosh, I don't know what's going to happen with my company. Those things will just drive you nuts. And if you though think about, okay, well, you know, I, um, I've got to focus on my own projects. I've got to focus on my own family. I've got to focus on what I can do to be there for my family, my friends, um, and I can only control and change things that are under my control. Then all of a sudden you start taking a more positive role in your life, and that is the mindset that can help you get through a pandemic like this.
Speaker 3:
Well, I'll tell you I was engaged, um, in a lengthy email thread, uh, I I've sat on a board for a nonprofit and my nonprofit runs underneath that board. And, uh, the gravitational pull to negativity is overwhelming. And, and I think it's especially astounding when people are in a space of fear. I think that, uh, that guttural instinctual response for survival can sometimes be so insanely powerful. I see this all the time, working with clients, um, in relationships, you know, when that guttural fear of attachment or abandonment or whatever comes up, they can't think positively. They cannot think rationally. Um, they have such a hard time going into a space of the thought of what I can control and what I can't control. They just want change. Everybody else. It's it's
Pete:
Control freak in us. And there's a couple of things that I, that come to mind, especially when talking about fear, because, you know, as, as you, you're well aware of, uh, fear and love are at the polar opposites of our emotions. And when we focus on fear, what I would, I like to remind people is that fear is really just an acronym. And the acronym is fictional evidence appearing real, because if you think about that, I'll repeat that again. Fictional evidence appearing real. What we do is we, we focus so much on what possibly might happen, but it hasn't happened yet. And you know, so like what you're talking about with relationships, Oh my gosh, my relationship is going downhill. Well, maybe that's how you're feeling, but is that what the other person is feeling? You don't know, you're, you're, you're, you're making assumptions and looking at the negative.
Pete:
And what I like to look at is, and it's, it's a really powerful question, especially when we're thinking about we're focusing on the fear, whether it be a relationship, whether it be, um, thinking about a new career move, things like that. I like to, to, to, to ask people this simple question, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? So think about that as a, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the energy around a question like that, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? Because it opens up the possibilities with a relationship, with a career, um, with Jay, you know, getting money, things like that. And you start thinking about possibilities as opposed to, Oh my gosh. You know, I can't possibly be, uh, someone who can attain that it's it's, the universe wants us to be successful.
Pete:
The universe wants to provide us what we want. The problem is that the universe doesn't know positive from negative. And so when we continue to think about negative stuff, it's going to say, Oh, you want more negativity? Well, here you go. So, you know, it's, it's a perfect, uh, a perfect example is if we're running late and we start stressing about being late, you're telling the universe, Oh, you want to be late. So I'm going to give you every red light on your drive to your appointment. For example, it's just, if we pile it on ourselves and we don't realize we do, and the same works for positivity, if we think about the positives and we are grateful for the positives, we are going to bring more positives into our life.
Speaker 3:
Well, I'll tell you what I, um, I said something hilarious to my husband the other day, we were, you know, out in the garden or whatever. And I said, um, man, I said, there was something I, to be anxious about. And he goes, okay. He goes, what are you talking about? Yeah, there was something I really wanted to stress it out for a minute. He's like, I don't understand. And I said, well, it's, you know, I can feel it underlying on my chest right now. So I think if I just go stress about it for a few minutes, then I'll get through it and realize there's certain things I can change and do different. And there's some things that I can't change at all and have no control over. And then I'll feel a lot better, really went and stressed about it for a few minutes. And I felt so much better. I was like, okay, I stressed it out. And, um, now I know what I can actually do in the way of forward action and moving forward and what is completely not going to be worth my time to ruminate on,
Pete:
Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. It reminds me, you know, there's people laugh because I say, if you really need to on a daily basis, schedule, worry time, you know, block it out.
Speaker 4:
Exactly, exactly,
Pete:
Exactly. That it's just, you know what, uh, from, you know, if it's in the evening or during the day or something, it's for 10 minutes, I'm just going to worry about whatever it is I need to worry. And then you have to have the, the, the, the, the mindset and the discipline to say, okay, I gave my, my 10 minutes to worry about that. Now I got to let it go
Speaker 3:
And, and have the gumption to move on. And I, I, I do the worry clock too. I'm a firm believer of that. I will say yesterday. I had a very interesting experience after kind of being involved in this email thread of negativity, of, you know, news articles and this, and not being kind of shared back and forth where I kept trying to come forward in this positive way. Um, and I felt that rabbit hole spiral ended up researching the 1918 Spanish flu and mass requirements. And, you know, it's crazy how fast you can get yourself in that space. And, um, we ended up watching the Flores lava, which I am super geeking out on Netflix right now. And, uh, I felt so much better. I felt so much better. I was like, that's exactly what I needed was just a complete and total distraction. I think sometimes we have to just completely do something different, like, like literally put the hammer down and say, I'm stopping right now and I'm going to do something different. And it's so hard to do sometimes.
Pete:
Oh, it is because you just, you start getting into the, as you say, the rabbit hole or, you know, circling the drain, it's, it's so easy to, uh, have, you know, start reading about stuff. That's like, Oh my gosh, it's compelling. It's kind of like, you know, being in a traffic jam and, you know, you look and you see some, a car on the side of the road that might've been in an accident, and we don't want to see the blood and guts, but we can't help. We gotta look at it. Right. I mean, it's just, it's human nature. And I eat just, I, I, it's amazing how, you know, if, if we were to focus just on the positives, unfortunately, that won't sell, uh, news articles because w you know, we're not drawn to the negative, to the positivity. We're drawn to the negativity.
Pete:
And it even goes with, uh, I, I did my research years and years ago on a word of mouth and, you know, the spread of word of mouth. And unfortunately what I found in my research, which, which was backed up in other research on this, on this particular, uh, area, is that we, like, let's say, if we have a, a positive experience with a vendor, we're likely to tell maybe two, three people, but if we have a negative experience with a vendor or, you know, or a restaurant or something like that, we're going to tell 16 people and online because of the, you know, the online stuff was starting to come out at that point, it's, it goes into the hundreds, if not thousands, because we, you know, the negativity starts to spread and it just provokes something. Whereas the positive it's kind of like, Oh yeah, that's nice. Nice to know that there's a positive vendor out there.
Michaela:
Um, true of the nation in general right now completely true of everything that I'm seeing with people's reactions to their negative emotions in general. It is it's, it's unbelievable. And I bet if we did a study on Yelp, we would find gear statistics to be exactly accurate. Yes. Um, the other day yesterday, uh, I was at a fabulous restaurant that I had frequented at the beginning of COVID. Um, and then of course it shut down and all of that kind of stuff. And our waiter was so phenomenal. Uh, well, yesterday I was in there and the lady introduced herself as the owner. And I said, well, since you're the owner, I just have to tell you about this wonderful experience I had with, with your waiter. Um, and she actually said, well, thank you for telling me that. And he had been promoted recently, demander. Um, but I thought, you know, how lovely that, uh, other people perhaps saw his, his spirit and his value, and he had, you know, gotten a promotion from that. And I think it's important when we do have those positive experiences, because that also reduces our stress, uh, by boosting our oxytocin. Isn't that true? Like, uh, so taking that time out to even, um, share something positive in that way can reduce our stress levels.
Pete:
Absolutely. And, you know, what's interesting about boosting the oxytocin B one of the things that it's going to be crazy, though, um, for some of your listeners to hear, hear about. But one thing that I like to do, um, with, with people is to remind them of the power of laughter and you don't have to have something funny to get the benefit of it. Um, what I mean by that is, let's say, you know, you were mentioning about this negative email string that you were having, you know, the time that, uh, some you receive a BA you know, a negative email. What I, what I like to do is I like to say, well, okay, take a look at that email. And before you start absorbing it, try laughing at it. And I mean, forced laughing. And the reason is, is because if you do about a forced laugh, like, and you do it for about 20 to 30 seconds, what happens is, is you get the benefits of laughter in your body and the calming and the, and the health benefits from that.
Pete:
The thing is, is you don't have to have a real, funny thing, like a kitten video or a joke or something like that, because our body doesn't realize the difference between a forced and a real laugh. It only knows that you're laughing and it excretes those endorphins. And so what I suggest is next time that you get the negative text, the negative email, uh, you know, or let's say you receive a bill, you didn't expect to. And it's like, Oh gosh. And we start going down that rabbit hole we were talking about earlier, instead we laugh at it. And then we go ahead and we take action with it. The reason is, is because we'll be in a better place mentally and physically to deal with the stress associated with that negative message. And it, all it takes is 20 to 30 seconds of just forced laughter and you get the benefits.
Michaela:
I love that. I also have a nine year old, so we do a lot of this. I mean, we're total goof nuggets as is, but, uh, we we've often been caught laughing and, you know, dad will come in and he'll say, what are you guys laughing at? And we're like, we don't even know. We just started laughing at something and it's going on. And we're not even sure what we're laughing at anymore.
Pete:
It usually, for me, it is especially with my kids when they were smaller. Cause you know, it was great age at nine and, and earlier of, you know, it's it, especially when it's good later at night, when you're tired, it's even easier to laugh at something that makes complete no nonsense. And you have no reason
Michaela:
Isn't that true on my, um, in my old Instagram, I had to restart my Instagram, but all my old Instagram, I had started a story at the beginning of the COVID thing called a pocket laugh. And it was all hilarious, like things that I thought that I randomly thought of while I was in the shower that made me laugh hysterically and then I would just post them up. And um, I think a lot of people thought I was crazy or minimizing and I often probably am taken as, you know, callous minimizing because I do find laughter as a primary source of stress relief always have. Um, I think that, you know, if you can't laugh at it, then what are we living for?
Pete:
Oh, isn't that so true? Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah,
Michaela:
Yeah. Um, so I, I liked that. I liked the, of the forced laugh and um, Oh wow. I can see so many useful benefits to that in the workplace. Um, and, and just various different settings, you know? Um, what else do you recommend for people that are simple? I know you have a stress relief model that only takes a few minutes a day. What else do you recommend? Well, it depends
Pete:
Under the situation. I mean, there's so many, many different things that you can do, but one of the things that is probably one of my favorite is just simple gratitude. And what I mean by that is we make it so quick easily to say, Oh my gosh, ah, I'm, I'm, you know, I don't have as big of a house as, as somebody else or I don't have as fancy of a car or my job isn't, doesn't have as good of a title as somebody else being grateful for what you have has an amazing power to help, help get you more of what you want instead of looking at, you know, the classic glass half empty. And I love talking about gratitude as well as, uh, what, um, others, you know, other authors have called the, remember the lottery and it's so easy, you know, to wake up in the morning and go, uh, I got another day of work or, uh, it's another day.
Pete:
The fact of the matter is that there is been approximately 117 million people who have ever lived on earth. And there's about 7.7, a billion people that are alive today. What that means is if you're alive today, you have already won the lottery and they're sick. You know, 14 simple math, 14 out of 15 people who have ever lived, uh, on earth do not have the opportunity to live today. They are already dead. And to say that this is an opportunity for, to make your life different. As, as you said, McKella earlier, what, why, you know, it makes life worth living well, if you don't, you know, if, if all you're going to do is focus on the negative, then you're wasting the opportunity. And what I like to ask people to, when they're feeling like this is to ask themselves a simple question. Is there anyone else in the world having it worse than you today?
Pete:
And honestly answer that it then starts getting you focused on the right things, what is important in life? So it's a matter of gratitude first. That is, that is a huge, huge mindset change because my wife and I, every night, we have a gratitude exercise and we look at what happened during the day. And we just say, what are you grateful for? And it doesn't have to be anything huge. It could be grateful for the roof over our head. It's grateful for having the opportunity to have a meal together. It's grateful for having a conversation with one of our kids. We had one this morning. So I'm sure that one is, uh, is going to come up. Um, uh, in our, in our gratitude exercise tonight. It's just the simple things. And it, it just, you know, you just keep on thinking about what is it that you're grateful for, and rather than, you know, what am I, what, what, what don't we have in our lives, which is the glass half empty mentality.
Michaela:
I just posted on Instagram Sunday about how we've been in the evening. We've been roasting s'mores or having a little ice cream treat. And, um, you know, I posted about how as young girl, I remember sitting on the Davenport with my grandma and grandpa and they would, you know, we would have ice cream and we would have conversations. And those are some of my fondest memories. And I think one of the greatest things that has come of all of this chaos in the world is a lot more time at home together doing those sorts of things for me, I know for some people that's like their living nightmare, but, um, for us, you know, we would have been running to different sporting events or we're big avid adventure travelers. So we're usually gone. Um, and so it's really kind of given us that opportunity to slow down.
Michaela:
And the other night we said, you know, this, this is something that we should really be grateful for this special time. And, um, and we find ways to do that every day in our just general conversations. And it's funny how gratitude shifts, sometimes I'm thankful for a toaster that works because for five days prior, I was pursing a broken toaster and finally got when the work or something, you know? So I think that, um, like what you said about simplicity is key. It does not have to be a big major. Oh, I'm gratitude. You know, I have so much gratitude for this, or I'm so grateful for that. It can just be simple recognition for something that's going well in the moment.
Pete:
Yep. That's absolutely true. And, and, you know, I started doing this, uh, based on a book that I read, uh, Rhonda burns magic, and, you know, the book takes you through 28 days of gratitude for different areas of your life. And, you know, it's so important because, um, you know, if you, if, if you can get into the habit, it like I've, I've managed to do with my wife. It really can have an effect. And, you know, you had asked about the light and model that I, that I developed on longterm stress relief. It's all about coming up with a, an, you know, a habit of realizing, okay, is there a technique or two that works for you and only takes a minute or two, that's what you focus on? Because over time, if you even focus just one or two minutes a day on your stress relief efforts, you will have longterm benefit, but you have to start, you have to start.
Pete:
And, you know, the, the, the, what I w why I focused on that was because before, uh, I wrote my book, it was too many books about one activity, but you'd have to take you read 300 pages to come up with whatever it was that the book was trying to, to, to emphasize. And for me, it's more like here's the real world. You're walking into a, a challenging meeting or a presentation, and you're stressed out and you need just to try something and you have one or two minutes before that event. And that's, that's the whole, whole, whole, uh, uh, uh, process of, of, of figuring out one or two activities that work for you. And just run with those.
Michaela:
I liked that I was, um, recently, um, picked up re picked up. Um, I hadn't read it in years, hold me tight. Dr. Sue Johnson. She's an emotionally focused therapist and I do a lot of couples work. So I was rereading that book. Um, and two things stood out to me. One of them was that, um, Charles Darwin used to stand at this aquarium where this hammer type, like thing would come down and he would try to prevent his gut instinct response to come up. Like he would try to talk himself out of his emotional response and that in one, 200th of a nanosecond, um, we can go into that space of, um, fight, fight, freeze, kind of the cortisol pumping through our blood, our adrenal system firing off like a rocket. Um, and you know, I think one of the biggest stressors that we can have in life is how the people in our lives, our friends, our family, especially spouses, children are, uh, are reacting to something and we can so quickly be triggered without even recognizing it. What do you, what do you encourage for people who maybe are having gut responses to something someone else is doing in the moment?
Pete:
Yeah. It's one of a great, a great, uh, process there is, um, to, to, to be mindful. And one technique that you can use is called the stop method and the, you know, it's, so, you know, if you're talking about being around somebody and you know, that you've just had some sort of negative encounter that, um, with an individual, and this is, you know, this is whether, you know, it's, it's somebody that you are, um, uh, working with, or it's somebody that, you know, is a family member, a child, you know, it could be a friend who's having a, uh, you know, an issue or something like that. What you do is you do the stop method and the stop is another acronym. And what, what the S stands for is just, you know, you just stop what you're doing and you feel your emotions being triggered.
Pete:
And what you do is you excuse yourself for a moment. You know, I need to go to the bathroom, or I need to take a quick walk, whatever it is, whatever you feel comfortable about, that's you just have to separate yourself and you, then you do the T, which is, um, you take a few breaths. So, so a few deep breaths, which is very, very therapeutic for your body. And then the O stands for observe. And you observe what's going on inside your mind and body, your thoughts, your emotions, and what physical response you actually wanted to normally or trigger that you would do normally. And then the piece just stands for proceed once you've processed your physical and mental reaction. Um, so what happens is even if you do this for just a few seconds, chances are you're going to respond in a way that you won't regret later, because it's so easy for us to be triggered and get into an argument with someone or say something that we will forever regret what we've all done, something like that. And this is a way for us to have control over that situation more and not say something that we would regret for ever, or for, you know, for year years, let's say so that's, that's one thing that I would re I would suggest as the stock method,
Michaela:
I love the stop method and funny, true story. Uh, just like a week ago, I was taking a very deep breath and my husband walked in the kitchen. He says, Oh, are you upset about something? And, uh, so he, it's, it's interesting how he's come to recognize me taking a deep that's my resetting process. And that's just furthering that point of how quickly in that nanosecond, we recognize reactions for our own survival, you know, he knows, wow. When she breeds like that, she's usually in some level of anger and that affects me.
Pete:
Well, it's kudos to your, to your husband for realizing that too, because, you know, how often would it be where, you know, the person who's, who we're in a relationship with will all of a sudden just get agitated as well, and, and, and, and throw, throw gasoline on the fire as opposed to being enough to realize, ah, okay. You know, I see, see, uh, you know, my wife is, is acting like this. I know that I need to respond in the appropriate way, which is, you know, it's, it's much more healthy than, you know, I, I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional childhood and, and, uh, you know, it was always just these fights and screaming and throwing things and furniture getting turned off, Not healthy for kids to have to experience.
Michaela:
Yeah. It's, it's incredible to how breathing really can just calm the entire central nervous system. I mean, even if I'm feeling just a little bit agitated in the car, or if I'm feeling sad about something, or if I'm feeling anxious, like just a few deep breaths, like truly deep breaths. I mean, you can literally almost feel everything just coming down.
Pete:
Oh, huge, huge. It's it goes hand in hand with the laughing and interesting that you say about the drive, you know, um, in the deep, deep breathing method. One of the things that, uh, I learned was that when you see somebody who let's say cuts you off in traffic, uh, you know, our normal reaction would be to, uh, get mad at them, or they're speeding and they're driving crazy down the road and, and you get mad at them for driving recklessly. But what we don't realize is what is going on in that person's life. You know, if the person is driving really fast down the road, is it because he or she is trying to get to the hospital because there's somebody, if a loved one has either gone into labor or has been in an accident or something like that, we don't know. We make assumptions. And there are lies where we create our own stress because we do it to ourselves making assumptions when we don't know all the information
Michaela:
And like the flip side of that. And I remember when I was going for my, um, to get my license as a psychotherapist, it's a grueling, like eight hour exam. And my supervisor said, um, you know, if you're feeling anxious or stressed, go do a bunch of jumping jacks in the parking lot. Um, because she said that the running can, um, calm the central nervous system as well. And one of the things that I firmly believe is that I ran my first marathon because I was running my stress away. Like I started training by just running until I stopped thinking, and then I would turn around and run back. And, um, so I think that the flip side of the deep breathing can be strenuous breathing.
Pete:
Sure, sure. Yeah. It's exercise is a wonderful stress relief tool and it doesn't actually have to be running. I know a lot of people do running or do what, you know, work in the gym or something, which I highly highly suggest if, if you physically are there, but even if it's just taking a walk, um, or, you know, one, one wonderful technique that you can do is, is find a, uh, you know, one of those pull up bars that goes on the frame of a door. We, yeah. So a wonderful thing that actually my wife's, uh, father taught me, he's a, uh, a retired pharmacist. And what's amazing is that, you know, when we get stressed and we're sitting at our desk for extended periods of time, when we're stressed, we tend to hunch over. And so our shoulders and our back at tight, well, instead of, um, letting that, that stress and that tightness in your spine, stay there.
Pete:
Even if you can spend 30 seconds to a minute by having one of those, uh, pull up bars on, on a doorframe, and then you, you, you hold onto it and you will allow your body to hang there for the 30 seconds to a minute. If your arms can arms enhance, can hold the weight. Because what that does is it stretches your vertebrae and it de stresses your body even for 30 seconds or a minute. And it is amazing because when I started doing that back, you know, let's see five, six years ago, regularly, I was going to the chiropractor twice a week and the chiropractor would put a, one of those would, would do the, you know, cracking my back by putting me in different positions and then would put one of those, uh, nerve stimulators on my back for 15, 20 minutes. And I had, it was great from a temporary standpoint, but it wasn't a longterm solution. And then when I started doing the traction that I described, I haven't had to go back to the chiropractor for five years because I'm taking care of my body on a daily basis. And only for, um, you know, a minute is all it's needed. If I don't have the time to go for a nice walk or, or some other exercise.
Michaela:
Well, I am laughing because I bought mine two, two years ago with the mission that I was going, or it might've been three years ago now because it was Winfrey solo came out. And it was, I had actually heard about it about Alex from a friend. And so I, anyway, long story, I thought, you know, it should really be a life mission of mine to be able to do a single pull ups. I bought the bar for that purpose, but funny story is that I ended up just hanging on it and I found that it really stretched my back out. And if I, if I held onto it and kind of pushed into the side, I have a disc bulge in one of them. And it like fixed it, it like went away from doing that. Like, and so I don't, I still have not done a pull up, but I hang on it like at least a couple times a week. And it feels so good. Like my whole neck stretches out and it just feels incredible.
Pete:
It's amazing. And, and that's all you need, you know, you don't, um, and, and if your back is hurting, like I ha I had a, a disc bulge as well. That happened when I was 19. And it was just something that, all it took was a weird twist one way or the other. And then all of a sudden, my, you know, that sciatica feeling going down my leg, it was awful. Well, you know, it's just, if you do it once or twice a week, or once a day or whatever, you can, it's amazing the difference and you've experienced it. And I can't, you know, those things, you know, if you go on Amazon, they cost you maybe 30 bucks, or you might find one
Michaela:
$19. Yeah. They're knuckling
Pete:
Nothing, but they make a huge difference. It does. And so I can't, I can't recommend it enough. It's just a wonderful, wonderful technique.
Michaela:
Likewise, I did get one of those foam rollers as well, and I roll out my back on that and feel so good. It's crazy. How, just little simple things like that, but I think what I think what's important here is that intuitively we have the ability as humans to know what feels good and know what we need. I believe that, yeah, my whole thing was, Ooh, I should learn how to do a pull it. But when I started to realize how good it felt to just hang there, my body went, yeah, this is what you need. Do this
Pete:
Exactly.
Michaela:
Same thing with, like, I would pop my back over the back of a chair and then I got the foam roller is, wow, this actually feels really good at night. Sometimes when I'm laying on the couch, I'll grab my, use my piece fingers to grab my big toe and do a nice long stretch with my legs. And it's like, yeah, that's what my body needed today. I think if we just slowed down enough to listen, it tells us exactly what it needs. Okay.
Pete:
Absolutely. And that's the mistake that I made back in 2008. I didn't listen to my body and I just kept on pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. And, uh, you know, until it's, it gets to the point where the body says, okay, if you're not going to listen to me there, we're going to give you a real serious situation. So it's, it, it is true. And it's funny because the pull up bar is so much more comfortable for me. I, uh, then I have an inverse table to do the same thing, but the 30 seconds to a minute that I spend on the inverse table is not nearly as therapeutic because the blood is rushing to my body as I'm lying upside down.
Michaela:
Right. Right. I did it on my brothers and I was like, Nope, get me off of here. I'm done with this. Yeah. That's crazy.
Speaker 3:
Well, listen, Pete, thank you so much for, for sharing all these wonderful insights distresses at a time when people are like insanely stressed,
Pete:
They get your book. Oh. So they can go to my website, which is Pete alexander.com. And they can find just Ford slashed book. And it has, they have opportunities to buy directly from Amazon, either in Kindle form, in print form, in the audio form, uh, or, you know, they can buy directly from me and I'll sign it and send it to them. So that, that works. And then I would highly recommend going to my blog because what I do is each Wednesday, I publish a tip that's included in the book and the book has like 120 tips. So there's probably, I've been doing this since October of 20 or publishing the blog since October of 2018. So there's a, uh, almost a hundred of the tips there, uh, for them to look at it either to read or, uh, I do video a one to two video on each tip as well.
Speaker 3:
Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. And I know that this message is so important now and, and always, so I really appreciate the valuable insight that you shared.
Pete:
Oh, my pleasure. Michaela, it's been a pleasure being on your show and I thank your listeners for listening.
Speaker 3:
Thanks so much. Talk soon. This has been a be you find happy podcast for more inspiration, check out the links.