1092: Transforming Stress into Your Superpower with Dr. Rebecca Heiss

Pete Mockaitis
Rebecca, welcome!

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, thanks so much for having me on, Pete. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting. Your research has been designated as transformative.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
I like this. This is important. The air quotes, the transformative. It is. Yeah, it’s crazy, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Tell me what is this transformative research?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, I’m a stress physiologist, and rather than telling people to get rid of their stress, I help them to transform their stress and actually have it serve them. So, I think it’s a fool’s errand to try and get rid of stress these days. And it only makes people feel worse because they can’t do it. You’re not supposed to get rid of stress, right? So how can we actually use it as a competitive advantage instead?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I would love to hear any particularly surprising discoveries you’ve made about how this is done in practice?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Sure. Well, I’ll start with the research that really drove me to dive deeper into this, and it was really about stress mindset. So, they were looking at 30,000 Americans over the course of eight years’ time. And, essentially, the question that arose was, “If you have very high levels of stress and believe that stress is bad for you,” well, those people die at very high rates which is probably unsurprising to all of us because we have high stress levels, and we’re like, “Oh, gosh I have to get rid of it. It’s really bad for us.”

Here’s the surprising bit about that research. The people that had very high levels of stress but simply believed that that stress wasn’t bad for them, that it was just energy, or that it was good, they had the lowest mortality rates of the entire study. So, that’s lower than people who had very low stress to begin with.

What that means is that it’s not stress that’s killing us. It’s the belief that stress is bad for us that is actually the real culprit here. And so, I am really interested in understanding stress mindset and how we can begin to shift it so that we can perform like Olympic athletes and break world records under high-pressure situations.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’ve heard this research as well and I’m thinking about the book The Upside of Stress. So, yeah, I heard about that, and I thought that was really interesting and striking. But we believe kind of what we believe, right, Dr. Rebecca?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, sure.

Pete Mockaitis
How do we shift a belief? Like, I think, if we have had experiences with stress, it’d be like, “That sucked. And, oh, my gosh, you know, I gained all this weight,” or, “I was having trouble sleeping,” or sort of whatever, we think too stressful times, we’re like, “Yeah, that was definitely bad. I don’t see how I can flip that belief, even though it would be nice if I had the opposite belief.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Cool. So, I’m going to give you my formula in a second, but before, I’m going to challenge your belief. So, here’s the question that I asked in my research. I want you to think about a project or an accomplishment that you’re most proud of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah? Now go back in time to when you were in the middle of that project. What was your stress level? Now, on a scale of zero to 100, I had the vast majority of people saying something like 5,842. Like, they were stressed out of their gourds during the time when they were doing their most meaningful, purposeful work.

So, yeah, sure, it might suck sometimes, but it’s also adding meaning and joy and purpose to our lives. And it’s unfortunate that we look back on it and think, “Yeah, that was good,” but we can’t live it in the moment. And so, my job is to help people recognize that stress really is a barometer for how much we’re caring about something in the moment, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that really does check out. And at times, it’s funny, when I feel overwhelmed, I have had the thought, “I wish I cared about this less. It’s, like, that would feel so much easier right now, but I am just being a stickler for having a high standard on this thing.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Sure. And, honestly, this is the weird thing about humans, and I love this about humans because we’re such strange, complex creatures, but we’re also the only animal on Earth that creates stress for ourselves. Robert Sapolsky, another stress physiologist, he wrote a great book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and there’s a reason, right? Lions, take lions, for example. Great hunters. They fail 80% of the time. Like, 80%.

If you fail at something 80% of the time, you would sit there, beating yourself up going, “Gosh, I’m such a lousy hunter. I can’t believe they even let me hunt with them. Like, I’m so terrible at this.” Lions, they miss a hunt, they take a nap. There’s no, like, thought that is creating more stress. And that’s exactly what humans do. We create more stress for ourselves. In fact, my research from last year showed that we create more stress for ourselves trying to get rid of the stress. So, yeah, that’s a big problem.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. Tell us about this research, we create more stress for ourselves trying to get rid of stress.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much the whole summary of it. You nailed it right there.

Pete Mockaitis
But, I mean, what was the experimental design such that this was uncovered?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, no, it wasn’t that exciting. It wasn’t that exciting. We listed 3,000 Americans, working Americans, ages 20 to 70, and asking a whole bunch of questions about their levels of stress, how different coping mechanisms, how they handle. And, you know, we went from everything from massage to prayer to, you name it, looking at various ways to intervene with their stress.

And people who ended up doing more interventions, reported feeling more stress after those interventions. And this backs up a lot of the research that was done and came out in 2024 in the Journal of Industrial Relations, looking at 90 different workplace interventions, and none of them actually helped reduce stress with the exception of one. There was one. I want to make sure we put an asterisk next to. And that was service to others.

So, I think this is really remarkable because we don’t talk enough about this with stress. We certainly talk about cortisol and all of the negative effects of stress. What we don’t talk about is oxytocin, which is another major stress hormone, which is this hormone of courage that encourages people to reach out and connect through the stress. And that’s really powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Yes. You know, this reminds me, talk about service to others, and I’ve shared this story before. One time I had a stressful situation. I needed to move out and I had a landlord who was difficult, and I just knew she was going to give me a hard time, you know, about like, “Oh, you didn’t repaint this section.” I was like, “I’m pretty sure I don’t have to, but, like, meh.” You know?

So, like, I knew it was going to be difficult, and it was very hot and there was a lot to be done. And you know that whole family, you know, in the mix, and I just decided that I wasn’t going to do this to please this landlord because I don’t really care about her opinion at all.

And I wasn’t going to do this to reclaim as much of my security deposits as possible because that was, hmm, she’s probably going to unjustly kind of capture as much as you could, regardless. And so, I didn’t have high expectations there. But I did remember that I had kind of a hard time moving in with power not being on and whatnot.

And I thought my purpose here is to give the next tenants the best possible experience when they come in and go, “Ah, this is home.” And that really did ease a lot of the toils, as opposed to me being grumbly like, “Oh, my gosh, tenants aren’t supposed to repaint. This is ridiculous. Aargh!” I was like, “Oh, someone’s going to come here and say, ‘How lovely! This is our home.’”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Isn’t that beautiful? Like, what a wonderful experience that you created. And not only did that probably help your stress, but it also relieved the stress of the person coming in. And so, this creates this lovely ripple effect of community. I think it’s so special. So, I love it when people are stressed. I’m like, “That’s great. You’re doing meaningful, purposeful work. How amazing.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, service to others. Let’s dig into it. Is that kind of your top thing we’re recommending here in your book, Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, it’s one of the tenets. So, I walk people through what I call my fearless stress formula. And, of course, you know, listen, the science is a really complex science. And in order to communicate it clearly, like every other author, I’ve broken it into three simple steps. Trust me, you’re going to have to read the references, go into the citations. It’s all there. But we try and make this as simple as possible.

So, the first step is simply, “Is it a tiger?” That’s the question. It’s the tiger. So, the tiger represents the fact that our stress response is really built for three minutes of screaming terror through the jungle. It’s a life and death situation. That’s what, whether you’re actually in a life and death situation, or whether you’re getting a full inbox, or a ping, or a ding, or a landlady who’s really upset with you, we’re having the same response.

And so, recognizing that it’s not an actual tiger, i.e. “This is not going to kill me in the next three minutes,” is the first step.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot because the specificity of, “There’s not a risk of it killing me in the next three minutes,” because it’s quite possible for our brains to immediately craft a story for why, “Well, no, this is super high stakes because if I blow this presentation, I could get fired and then I wouldn’t have the money to be able to pay for the mortgage. And we’ll be foreclosing on.”

So, it’s like, we can create a, “Well, no, this is, in fact, nearly life or death-ish.” It’s like, “Hmm, no, three minutes will make or break, life or death, is really what we mean here.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
That’s it! And, Pete, what you just did is it’s literally what I teach people. This is catastrophizing, it’s completely normal. It’s what our brains love to do, and it’s a feature. It’s not a bug. They’re protecting us from all the ways that this is going to go catastrophically wrong. And 99.9999999% of the time, you’re not going to actually die.

And so, at this stage, I ask people to invite the tiger in for tea. Don’t try and avoid it. We’re not trying to avoid the stressor. We’re saying, “Come on, let’s sit down. Let’s name you. What are you? Who are you? What are you all about? Oh, you’re not actually going to kill me. Great. If I can sit for three minutes with it and not be dead, then I can move to the second stage, which is the transfer stage.”

“That’s where I’m taking all of this energy that my body has created for me. Thank you very much, body, for this, right? I now have all of this stress energy that is helping me to perform in this moment, to rise to the occasion, which is a gift. And so, now I can use this energy. Instead of stressing and being anxious and worrying, I can shift it into energy that is excitement energy or joyful energy or even productive anger.”

Like, your example is great. You’re angry and you used that anger to do something that was helpful for somebody else. So, this shift is really about curiosity. And I ask people to try and get curious in the moment, like, “What is this feeling that I’m having?” Because when they do that, two things happen. One, curiosity and fear cannot coexist.

Like, there’s literally no brain mechanism that allows for it because for 200,000 plus years we never had a tiger charging them, and we’re like, “Huh, I wonder how fast it’s coming? I wonder how many stripes it’s got?” Like, those people died. And so, when we get curious, we kick ourselves out of this fear response and it frees us up to say, “What else could this possibly mean?”

And then our brain looks to our body, and if we’re sitting open-shouldered with a smile on and acting as if there’s a potential for adventure, our brain shifts into this mode of excitement, and it can begin to use all of this energy for other possibilities.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the third step?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
So, the third step of the formula is the trajectory. So where do we want to point all of this? Now we’ve got all of the butterflies in alignment, where do we want to point our stress energy? And what people mostly do is they point it away from the stressor, right? It’s like, “How do I avoid this? How can I minimize this? How can I calm down?” which is the opposite of what we want to do.

We want to run directly at the stressor in small, tiny, incremental ways to get through it onto the other side with more resources and more energy available to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now when it comes to the curiosity, what are your top recommended questions or explorations there?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Oh, I love that. You know, I think it’s really individual and, especially, very individual to the particular scenario. But a couple of good ones that I use frequently is, “What joy can this bring me? What will I learn from this? How will I grow from this? What adventure might I have?” Those are easy very applicable questions that really work for almost any scenario.

And I want to be careful here because I don’t want to sound Pollyanna-ish, right? People get horrible diagnoses every day. And I’m not saying you have to be joyful or have an adventure when you get a cancer diagnosis. What I am going to say is you still have energy that you get to use. And you can use that anger, that frustration, in a way that actually projects you forward through the stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I guess, I’m thinking there’s also some not so helpful curious questions that we could entertain. What do you recommend we not chase down?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Sure. “How can this go horribly wrong?” Although, here’s the thing, Pete, even if you do that, I’m actually okay with it because when you stay in curiosity, what you’re doing is you’re forcing your brain to go from that limbic system, that emotional processing center, to a more logical frontal lobe. And so now we’re actually listing out all of the horrible things that are going to go wrong, and we’re sitting in it.

And it’s going to light up our logical brain to go, “Well, okay, that’s a possibility, but is it a probability? Hmm, likely not.” And as long as we can stay in that curiosity, I wouldn’t say there’s a bad question. There are some that are better than others, but I don’t want to limit people to say, like, “I should never say X, Y, and Z,” because I guarantee you that’s where your brain is going to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess, I suppose I have a knack for, if I ask myself a question, generating lots of potential answers for it such as, “Man, why am I freaking out about this so much?” “Oh, well, because of dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” And it’s like, “Oh, well, now I’m feeling all the more unpleasant.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Good. No, that’s good for the moment. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, and I wish I could remember the person’s name – it’s bothering me – who coined the phrase, “Name it to tame it.” And what we’re doing with emotions is we’re actually naming them and it takes away their power. Because it’s not that, “I am angry,” or, “I am stressed.” It’s that, “I have it. This is a piece of what I’m experiencing.” And what it allows us to do is create a little bit of emotional distance.

So, one of the steps within the transfer stage is to begin to act as if. So, once you get all of those answers down on a page, what would be your best possible outcome? Like, what is the story you want to be telling right now? And when you select it, how would your body position itself if you were having an adventure, if you were going to learn something from this?

And then I ask people to, like, throw their shoulders back, put a smile on, like, “I’m still really anxious. This is not going well.” But when you do that, you actually give your brain feedback because your brain is constantly looking to your body, going, “What does this signal mean? What’s happening right now?”

And if you have a smile on and your shoulders are thrown back, your brain goes, “Interesting. This must not be a life and death thing. Maybe we’re okay. Maybe we’re excited about this.” And it opens the door of that possibility. So, acting as if there’s a potential for excitement or a potential for learning and growth is half the battle.

Pete Mockaitis
Now I believe that and I’ve experienced that, and you’re reminding me of some Tony Robbins action of power moves and all that. But could you share with us some of the underlying research there that shows that that is valid and legit?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, Amy Cuddy’s research out of Harvard, and this went through, oh, my gosh, she did a TED Talk on this research probably five years ago. And it received such critical analyses because people were, like, really questioning her methods. And it went through, I mean, years and years of scrutiny. At the end of the day, it turns out she was right.

So, this research is basically looking at the physiological response to the way our body is positioned. So, when we put our shoulders back and we have an open position or a superhero pose, and we put a smile on our face, or even a pencil in my mouth, when you mentioned Tony Robbins’ research, “I put a pencil in my mouth,” it kind of forces a smile and it’s more of a grimace. It doesn’t even have to be a real smile.

But what that does is it feeds back into our limbic system and creates the release of the same neurochemicals, the same hormones that we would be experiencing if we were smiling for real. And this research is so fun because there were graduate students that were paid to put their pencil in their mouth and come in and listen to lectures.

And they found those lectures to be funnier when they had a pencil in their mouth. They found those lectures to have more humorous content. And it was just because they themselves were smiling without even recognizing it.

I think we often think that we smile because we’re happy, which is partially true. But the larger truth there is that we are happy because we’re smiling.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a couple examples of folks who tied all this together and, in fact, saw some stress, but then did these three steps and were able to make that really work for them?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
So, I’ve been studying stress research for decades now. And there was a moment, about 10 years ago, when I quit my job, sold my house, and divorced my husband in a single month. Unfortunately, yeah, yeah, how about that? Unfortunately, my sister-in-law was diagnosed with a terminal disease and it’s one of those moments that really pulls the rug out.

And I looked at my life and I realized that, had that been my diagnosis, I’d be really disappointed with the life that I’d led. And so, that month, I quit my job, sold my house, divorced my husband. And I realized in that moment that I really needed to apply all of the research that I had been doing.

And so, this is actually when the fearless formula evolved, is I started to take everything in, and I was like, “Wow, this feels. I don’t have a place to live.” And when I tell you I have no plan, I mean the household, and I was like, “Where am I going to sleep tonight?” And so, yeah, it was a big moment.

And I had to recognize, “It wasn’t life and death. This couldn’t be an adventure. Take these small, tiny little steps forward, backwards, sideways, left, right, because the outcome doesn’t ultimately matter.” It’s that I’m taking action every day toward and through the stressor itself. And that’s actually how I launched my speaking career.

I really had always wanted to be in speaking, and I decided that my first small step was to call myself a speaker. And my second small step was to build a website. And my third small step was to give a free talk. And I just kept repeating this and recognizing this, “I’m not dead yet. I can still use this energy. I can take small steps forward.” So, yeah, there’s one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, cool. Congratulations.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, thanks. It’s been fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, can you help us more with the belief side of things? So, it’s like, okay, that’s cool. That worked for you. Okay, that’s cool for the people who put pencils in their mouths in the study. What is some more of the most killer evidence that this belief that stress is advantageous for us is, in fact, true?

(24:20)

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah. The 2013 study that looks at your purpose and meaning and your stress level. This was probably one of the most formative experiments for me in that, you know, I turned 40, I’m freaking out because, “What is life? And how do I make it meaningful?” And, so of course, the super nerd that I am, I looked to the research, I looked to the science.

And it turns out that the number one correlate to a meaningful, purposeful life is stress. So, past stressful events, current state of stress, and even future worry and anxiety. And that tripped me up. Like, that was a, “Whoa! How is this even remotely possible?” Because, to me, I’d spent so much of my time trying to avoid stress, trying to run away from it.

But what if we are, in fact, running away from the very thing that brings our life meaning and purpose? And I think that’s a really powerful reckoning to have, is to say, “Oh, gosh, yeah, when I care about something, I’m stressed. And if I’m stressed, that has the potential to bring purpose and meaning into my life.”

And so, the research that we did last year, I had people walk through my fearless formula for 30 days. They did journaling activity just so we could keep track and make sure that they were following the protocol, and they decreased their perceived stress levels, 85% of them decreased their perceived stress levels, and we had a massive increase in the heart rate variability of the participants.

So, heart rate variability, for anybody that’s not familiar with it, is just a biological measure of how well you adapt to stress. So, more heart rate variability, typically, is better. So that was a pretty convincing nod to this stuff. This stuff, there may be something to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m a big fan of heart rate variability. In fact, I have an Oura ring and a Lief device, which is hardcore.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Nice!

Pete Mockaitis
It sticks to your body and all that. So, what I find really fun about that is, it is not within your conscious control.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
No. Hard numbers. Yep.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like this, your heart is doing what your heart is doing. And you can use some breathing, which helps. But, generally speaking, as you’re living your life, that’s there. So, over these 30 days, their perceived stress decreased. What does that mean? Their meaning was also decreasing? Or, what’s the story here?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Great, great follow up. So, no, because here’s the weird part. So, we did a perceived stress assessment at the beginning and at the end, and we also did a meaning assessment as well. And so, while their perceived stress had decreased, their actual level of stress hadn’t changed. So, this is interesting, right? They’re still reporting the same number of stressors. They’re still reporting the same, of course, cumulative stress. They’re still reporting the same micro-stressors, but their perception of it had shifted.

So, they were able to actually use the stress, their mindset itself had shifted to the point where they could use it differently. So, they’re not changing their stress level. Those stressors are still coming at them. They’re changing their mindset around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, what are the sorts of things they were doing in these 30 days?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
So, they were walking through the T-minus-three technique, the fearless formula. So, they were identifying tigers at the end of the day. So, “What was the tiger that found me today? What stressors did I experience?”

They’d take two minutes to write out all of the stressors. They then take three minutes to transfer that energy to say, “Okay, how can I get curious about this? What did I do? How did I explore this? How did some of it become an adventure?”

And then they’d take the last two minutes of this. Again, it was a six-minute total intervention. And then the last two minutes were, “Where did I point the stress energy? How did I use it? How can I continue to use it tomorrow? What are my follow up actions that I’m going to take?” And so, six minutes, 30 days, pretty massive results.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. So, they’re writing it by hand?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yep, by hand. Oh, good question. Very important. Yeah, again, our brain does a weird thing when we type. It’s not quite as effective. So, by hand, in a journal, that was sent to each of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious, good doctor, what if we find ourselves in the opposite boat in terms of, we’re just kind of dragging, we’re just kind of like not really feeling it, our lives aren’t sort of…?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Lethargically moving through life?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not sort of an easy-peasy vacation, but it’s sort of like, “Hmm, I’m not really stressed. And I’m also not really jazzed. It’s like maybe work is going just okay, and other dimensions of life are fine, but you’re not really feeling all that freaked out or motivated to get after much.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, I’d say you’re in the meh zone. Like, “Meh.” Which, you know, look, I’m not going to prescribe anything to you. I’m going to say, “What do you want out of life? If you want meh, you’ve got meh. That’s great.”

Otherwise, I’d say, “Okay, what’s a bigger goal you can pursue? How do you bring stress into your life? How can you create some type-three fun, which is the type where you’re like, ‘This isn’t fun at all. This is just, like, it might be a good story 10 years from now, but it’s not fun.’” You actually hype up the level of stress in your life.

So, yeah, I’d say try some new things. Get out there and find some novelty. Do some discomfort exercises. We talked at the very beginning about staring at each other for, like, a very uncomfortable period of time. Connect with people. Put yourself out in a way that is slightly uncomfortable. And I would keep a journal because we’re really bad at in the moment at assessing our own levels of stress or what we think is going to kill us.

What I often find in these journals, and I keep some that I call a disaster diary, where I follow my own protocol, right? And, like, “Here’s the things that’s going wrong today. And here’s where I think I’m going to die. And this is my tiger.” And then I’ll go back in a month, five months, six months, a year. Most of the things I don’t remember, right?

If it really was memorable, I might have learned something from it, but nothing actually killed me. I mean, as far as I can tell, I’m still in the flesh living and breathing. So, when we recognize that, again, things can shift in perspective a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, tell us, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, I think the biggest thing to mention is to recognize that stress isn’t something to be rid of. And that the more people tell you to get rid of your stress, the more stressed out you’re probably going to become because you believe something is broken with you.

Nothing is broken in you, right? You’re not doing it wrong. You’re not meditating wrong or getting massages wrong. Like, stress is part of life and it should be. So, stop stressing yourself out about stress and use it differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I also wanted to get your hot take. Having read this research earlier, I was thinking about how that would be, that’s a great belief. I’d like to have it. And so going through 30 days of journaling sure sounds like a very robust way to get the memo thoroughly.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, it forces you. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, like, okay, message received. But I thought, “Well, hey, we’re rather more susceptible to suggestion in hypnosis.” So, I thought, “Well, there’s probably some cool hypnosis track I can find for this.” And I couldn’t find any of them anywhere because all of the stress-related hypnosis were about how to, like, chill out and relax. It was like, “No, no, I want one that’s going to make me think, ‘Hey, you’re stressed, but good news, buddy.’” You know, and I couldn’t find that anywhere.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, that’s maybe, well, maybe you should create it. Maybe I should create. Maybe we should. This is a new product.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe my soothing voice. Speaking slowly.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
I mean, look, the placebo effect is really powerful. I mean, I’m sure you’ve read the housekeeper study.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, with the calories?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you’re decreasing your body fat and your waist to hip ratio in four weeks because you believe that you’re doing more work or that it is. I think humans are more susceptible than they think they are to shifting their mindsets. And, look, don’t believe it. Try it. Like, force yourself to do it for 30 days and see what happens. Record your heart rate variability. That would be my challenge to you. Yeah, do it. Do it and I expect a full report please.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. Cool beans. All right. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
You know, my favorite quote is probably from my grandmother, who told me when I was freaked out over all of these colleges that I was trying to apply to, and I didn’t know where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my life, she said, “Don’t let your options be your burdens.”

And I thought that was one of the most brilliant things anybody has ever said. I think the world that we live in presents us all with a lot of options at work, at home, in life. We are flooded with opportunity. And the more we can avoid feeling overwhelmed by them, the better off and happier we’ll be.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
My favorite study is probably the milkshake study. Are you familiar with milkshake study? Have you done this already?

Pete Mockaitis
Is this the one where they gave people different calorie contents in the milkshakes, but they lied to them about what’s inside?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so same caloric value in both milkshakes. One was the luxurious milkshake, the high fat content, really high calories, and the other was the diet shake. And, basically, people who had the high fat milkshake said, “Oh, gosh, I’m so full. I couldn’t possibly…” And their ghrelin levels actually increased.

And so, they actually did feel more full. So, there was a physiological response to this high fat milkshake, despite the fact there was no difference between the two. Whereas, the diet milkshake folks were like, “Oh, gosh, I’m starving. I only just had this diet milkshake,” and their ghrelin levels stayed the same.

So, I think this is, to me, one of the best placebo setups ever because you’re seeing not only are people vocalizing and sharing, like, how they feel but their body itself is having a hormonal response as well, which I think is fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
My favorite book is probably Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I think it is a must-read. It is probably marketed toward women. I think it is a must-read for all genders, for all people. It’s just a brilliantly written book about the way the world is perceived and the way we can un-tame ourselves, yeah.

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

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Probably my WHOOP. I love my WHOOP band. I’m constantly, I’m a data freak, so measuring my heart rate variability and all of those things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Favorite habit is reading 10 minutes a day. It’s a simple, straightforward, very small step that I can incorporate at night and it helps me wind down and really get ready for processing all those thoughts as I sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect with folks, and they quote it back to you often?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
“It’s not a tiger,” “Curiosity and fear cannot coexist,” and, “Invite the tiger for tea.” Those are probably the three. I actually had somebody who got a tattoo of a tiger sitting down for tea. So those are probably the three most resonant quotes.

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

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
My website, RebeccaHeiss.com. You can get in touch with me there. You can email me. You can reach out directly to me. Or, my Instagram is @DrRebeccaHeiss. Please feel free to reach out. Love to hear from you.

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

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, my final challenge to each of you is to stay stressed and lean into it. Start charging, running at that roar rather than avoiding the tiger.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rebecca, thank you.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
It’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Rebecca, welcome!

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, thanks so much for having me on, Pete. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting. Your research has been designated as transformative.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
I like this. This is important. The air quotes, the transformative. It is. Yeah, it’s crazy, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Tell me what is this transformative research?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, I’m a stress physiologist, and rather than telling people to get rid of their stress, I help them to transform their stress and actually have it serve them. So, I think it’s a fool’s errand to try and get rid of stress these days. And it only makes people feel worse because they can’t do it. You’re not supposed to get rid of stress, right? So how can we actually use it as a competitive advantage instead?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I would love to hear any particularly surprising discoveries you’ve made about how this is done in practice?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Sure. Well, I’ll start with the research that really drove me to dive deeper into this, and it was really about stress mindset. So, they were looking at 30,000 Americans over the course of eight years’ time. And, essentially, the question that arose was, “If you have very high levels of stress and believe that stress is bad for you,” well, those people die at very high rates which is probably unsurprising to all of us because we have high stress levels, and we’re like, “Oh, gosh I have to get rid of it. It’s really bad for us.”

Here’s the surprising bit about that research. The people that had very high levels of stress but simply believed that that stress wasn’t bad for them, that it was just energy, or that it was good, they had the lowest mortality rates of the entire study. So, that’s lower than people who had very low stress to begin with.

What that means is that it’s not stress that’s killing us. It’s the belief that stress is bad for us that is actually the real culprit here. And so, I am really interested in understanding stress mindset and how we can begin to shift it so that we can perform like Olympic athletes and break world records under high-pressure situations.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’ve heard this research as well and I’m thinking about the book The Upside of Stress. So, yeah, I heard about that, and I thought that was really interesting and striking. But we believe kind of what we believe, right, Dr. Rebecca?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, sure.

Pete Mockaitis
How do we shift a belief? Like, I think, if we have had experiences with stress, it’d be like, “That sucked. And, oh, my gosh, you know, I gained all this weight,” or, “I was having trouble sleeping,” or sort of whatever, we think too stressful times, we’re like, “Yeah, that was definitely bad. I don’t see how I can flip that belief, even though it would be nice if I had the opposite belief.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Cool. So, I’m going to give you my formula in a second, but before, I’m going to challenge your belief. So, here’s the question that I asked in my research. I want you to think about a project or an accomplishment that you’re most proud of.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah? Now go back in time to when you were in the middle of that project. What was your stress level? Now, on a scale of zero to 100, I had the vast majority of people saying something like 5,842. Like, they were stressed out of their gourds during the time when they were doing their most meaningful, purposeful work.

So, yeah, sure, it might suck sometimes, but it’s also adding meaning and joy and purpose to our lives. And it’s unfortunate that we look back on it and think, “Yeah, that was good,” but we can’t live it in the moment. And so, my job is to help people recognize that stress really is a barometer for how much we’re caring about something in the moment, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that really does check out. And at times, it’s funny, when I feel overwhelmed, I have had the thought, “I wish I cared about this less. It’s, like, that would feel so much easier right now, but I am just being a stickler for having a high standard on this thing.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Sure. And, honestly, this is the weird thing about humans, and I love this about humans because we’re such strange, complex creatures, but we’re also the only animal on Earth that creates stress for ourselves. Robert Sapolsky, another stress physiologist, he wrote a great book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and there’s a reason, right? Lions, take lions, for example. Great hunters. They fail 80% of the time. Like, 80%.

If you fail at something 80% of the time, you would sit there, beating yourself up going, “Gosh, I’m such a lousy hunter. I can’t believe they even let me hunt with them. Like, I’m so terrible at this.” Lions, they miss a hunt, they take a nap. There’s no, like, thought that is creating more stress. And that’s exactly what humans do. We create more stress for ourselves. In fact, my research from last year showed that we create more stress for ourselves trying to get rid of the stress. So, yeah, that’s a big problem.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. Tell us about this research, we create more stress for ourselves trying to get rid of stress.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty much the whole summary of it. You nailed it right there.

Pete Mockaitis
But, I mean, what was the experimental design such that this was uncovered?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, no, it wasn’t that exciting. It wasn’t that exciting. We listed 3,000 Americans, working Americans, ages 20 to 70, and asking a whole bunch of questions about their levels of stress, how different coping mechanisms, how they handle. And, you know, we went from everything from massage to prayer to, you name it, looking at various ways to intervene with their stress.

And people who ended up doing more interventions, reported feeling more stress after those interventions. And this backs up a lot of the research that was done and came out in 2024 in the Journal of Industrial Relations, looking at 90 different workplace interventions, and none of them actually helped reduce stress with the exception of one. There was one. I want to make sure we put an asterisk next to. And that was service to others.

So, I think this is really remarkable because we don’t talk enough about this with stress. We certainly talk about cortisol and all of the negative effects of stress. What we don’t talk about is oxytocin, which is another major stress hormone, which is this hormone of courage that encourages people to reach out and connect through the stress. And that’s really powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Yes. You know, this reminds me, talk about service to others, and I’ve shared this story before. One time I had a stressful situation. I needed to move out and I had a landlord who was difficult, and I just knew she was going to give me a hard time, you know, about like, “Oh, you didn’t repaint this section.” I was like, “I’m pretty sure I don’t have to, but, like, meh.” You know?

So, like, I knew it was going to be difficult, and it was very hot and there was a lot to be done. And you know that whole family, you know, in the mix, and I just decided that I wasn’t going to do this to please this landlord because I don’t really care about her opinion at all.

And I wasn’t going to do this to reclaim as much of my security deposits as possible because that was, hmm, she’s probably going to unjustly kind of capture as much as you could, regardless. And so, I didn’t have high expectations there. But I did remember that I had kind of a hard time moving in with power not being on and whatnot.

And I thought my purpose here is to give the next tenants the best possible experience when they come in and go, “Ah, this is home.” And that really did ease a lot of the toils, as opposed to me being grumbly like, “Oh, my gosh, tenants aren’t supposed to repaint. This is ridiculous. Aargh!” I was like, “Oh, someone’s going to come here and say, ‘How lovely! This is our home.’”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Isn’t that beautiful? Like, what a wonderful experience that you created. And not only did that probably help your stress, but it also relieved the stress of the person coming in. And so, this creates this lovely ripple effect of community. I think it’s so special. So, I love it when people are stressed. I’m like, “That’s great. You’re doing meaningful, purposeful work. How amazing.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, service to others. Let’s dig into it. Is that kind of your top thing we’re recommending here in your book, Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, it’s one of the tenets. So, I walk people through what I call my fearless stress formula. And, of course, you know, listen, the science is a really complex science. And in order to communicate it clearly, like every other author, I’ve broken it into three simple steps. Trust me, you’re going to have to read the references, go into the citations. It’s all there. But we try and make this as simple as possible.

So, the first step is simply, “Is it a tiger?” That’s the question. It’s the tiger. So, the tiger represents the fact that our stress response is really built for three minutes of screaming terror through the jungle. It’s a life and death situation. That’s what, whether you’re actually in a life and death situation, or whether you’re getting a full inbox, or a ping, or a ding, or a landlady who’s really upset with you, we’re having the same response.

And so, recognizing that it’s not an actual tiger, i.e. “This is not going to kill me in the next three minutes,” is the first step.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I like that a lot because the specificity of, “There’s not a risk of it killing me in the next three minutes,” because it’s quite possible for our brains to immediately craft a story for why, “Well, no, this is super high stakes because if I blow this presentation, I could get fired and then I wouldn’t have the money to be able to pay for the mortgage. And we’ll be foreclosing on.”

So, it’s like, we can create a, “Well, no, this is, in fact, nearly life or death-ish.” It’s like, “Hmm, no, three minutes will make or break, life or death, is really what we mean here.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
That’s it! And, Pete, what you just did is it’s literally what I teach people. This is catastrophizing, it’s completely normal. It’s what our brains love to do, and it’s a feature. It’s not a bug. They’re protecting us from all the ways that this is going to go catastrophically wrong. And 99.9999999% of the time, you’re not going to actually die.

And so, at this stage, I ask people to invite the tiger in for tea. Don’t try and avoid it. We’re not trying to avoid the stressor. We’re saying, “Come on, let’s sit down. Let’s name you. What are you? Who are you? What are you all about? Oh, you’re not actually going to kill me. Great. If I can sit for three minutes with it and not be dead, then I can move to the second stage, which is the transfer stage.”

“That’s where I’m taking all of this energy that my body has created for me. Thank you very much, body, for this, right? I now have all of this stress energy that is helping me to perform in this moment, to rise to the occasion, which is a gift. And so, now I can use this energy. Instead of stressing and being anxious and worrying, I can shift it into energy that is excitement energy or joyful energy or even productive anger.”

Like, your example is great. You’re angry and you used that anger to do something that was helpful for somebody else. So, this shift is really about curiosity. And I ask people to try and get curious in the moment, like, “What is this feeling that I’m having?” Because when they do that, two things happen. One, curiosity and fear cannot coexist.

Like, there’s literally no brain mechanism that allows for it because for 200,000 plus years we never had a tiger charging them, and we’re like, “Huh, I wonder how fast it’s coming? I wonder how many stripes it’s got?” Like, those people died. And so, when we get curious, we kick ourselves out of this fear response and it frees us up to say, “What else could this possibly mean?”

And then our brain looks to our body, and if we’re sitting open-shouldered with a smile on and acting as if there’s a potential for adventure, our brain shifts into this mode of excitement, and it can begin to use all of this energy for other possibilities.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the third step?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
So, the third step of the formula is the trajectory. So where do we want to point all of this? Now we’ve got all of the butterflies in alignment, where do we want to point our stress energy? And what people mostly do is they point it away from the stressor, right? It’s like, “How do I avoid this? How can I minimize this? How can I calm down?” which is the opposite of what we want to do.

We want to run directly at the stressor in small, tiny, incremental ways to get through it onto the other side with more resources and more energy available to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now when it comes to the curiosity, what are your top recommended questions or explorations there?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Oh, I love that. You know, I think it’s really individual and, especially, very individual to the particular scenario. But a couple of good ones that I use frequently is, “What joy can this bring me? What will I learn from this? How will I grow from this? What adventure might I have?” Those are easy very applicable questions that really work for almost any scenario.

And I want to be careful here because I don’t want to sound Pollyanna-ish, right? People get horrible diagnoses every day. And I’m not saying you have to be joyful or have an adventure when you get a cancer diagnosis. What I am going to say is you still have energy that you get to use. And you can use that anger, that frustration, in a way that actually projects you forward through the stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, I guess, I’m thinking there’s also some not so helpful curious questions that we could entertain. What do you recommend we not chase down?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Sure. “How can this go horribly wrong?” Although, here’s the thing, Pete, even if you do that, I’m actually okay with it because when you stay in curiosity, what you’re doing is you’re forcing your brain to go from that limbic system, that emotional processing center, to a more logical frontal lobe. And so now we’re actually listing out all of the horrible things that are going to go wrong, and we’re sitting in it.

And it’s going to light up our logical brain to go, “Well, okay, that’s a possibility, but is it a probability? Hmm, likely not.” And as long as we can stay in that curiosity, I wouldn’t say there’s a bad question. There are some that are better than others, but I don’t want to limit people to say, like, “I should never say X, Y, and Z,” because I guarantee you that’s where your brain is going to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess, I suppose I have a knack for, if I ask myself a question, generating lots of potential answers for it such as, “Man, why am I freaking out about this so much?” “Oh, well, because of dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” And it’s like, “Oh, well, now I’m feeling all the more unpleasant.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Good. No, that’s good for the moment. I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, and I wish I could remember the person’s name – it’s bothering me – who coined the phrase, “Name it to tame it.” And what we’re doing with emotions is we’re actually naming them and it takes away their power. Because it’s not that, “I am angry,” or, “I am stressed.” It’s that, “I have it. This is a piece of what I’m experiencing.” And what it allows us to do is create a little bit of emotional distance.

So, one of the steps within the transfer stage is to begin to act as if. So, once you get all of those answers down on a page, what would be your best possible outcome? Like, what is the story you want to be telling right now? And when you select it, how would your body position itself if you were having an adventure, if you were going to learn something from this?

And then I ask people to, like, throw their shoulders back, put a smile on, like, “I’m still really anxious. This is not going well.” But when you do that, you actually give your brain feedback because your brain is constantly looking to your body, going, “What does this signal mean? What’s happening right now?”

And if you have a smile on and your shoulders are thrown back, your brain goes, “Interesting. This must not be a life and death thing. Maybe we’re okay. Maybe we’re excited about this.” And it opens the door of that possibility. So, acting as if there’s a potential for excitement or a potential for learning and growth is half the battle.

Pete Mockaitis
Now I believe that and I’ve experienced that, and you’re reminding me of some Tony Robbins action of power moves and all that. But could you share with us some of the underlying research there that shows that that is valid and legit?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, Amy Cuddy’s research out of Harvard, and this went through, oh, my gosh, she did a TED Talk on this research probably five years ago. And it received such critical analyses because people were, like, really questioning her methods. And it went through, I mean, years and years of scrutiny. At the end of the day, it turns out she was right.

So, this research is basically looking at the physiological response to the way our body is positioned. So, when we put our shoulders back and we have an open position or a superhero pose, and we put a smile on our face, or even a pencil in my mouth, when you mentioned Tony Robbins’ research, “I put a pencil in my mouth,” it kind of forces a smile and it’s more of a grimace. It doesn’t even have to be a real smile.

But what that does is it feeds back into our limbic system and creates the release of the same neurochemicals, the same hormones that we would be experiencing if we were smiling for real. And this research is so fun because there were graduate students that were paid to put their pencil in their mouth and come in and listen to lectures.

And they found those lectures to be funnier when they had a pencil in their mouth. They found those lectures to have more humorous content. And it was just because they themselves were smiling without even recognizing it.

I think we often think that we smile because we’re happy, which is partially true. But the larger truth there is that we are happy because we’re smiling.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a couple examples of folks who tied all this together and, in fact, saw some stress, but then did these three steps and were able to make that really work for them?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
So, I’ve been studying stress research for decades now. And there was a moment, about 10 years ago, when I quit my job, sold my house, and divorced my husband in a single month. Unfortunately, yeah, yeah, how about that? Unfortunately, my sister-in-law was diagnosed with a terminal disease and it’s one of those moments that really pulls the rug out.

And I looked at my life and I realized that, had that been my diagnosis, I’d be really disappointed with the life that I’d led. And so, that month, I quit my job, sold my house, divorced my husband. And I realized in that moment that I really needed to apply all of the research that I had been doing.

And so, this is actually when the fearless formula evolved, is I started to take everything in, and I was like, “Wow, this feels. I don’t have a place to live.” And when I tell you I have no plan, I mean the household, and I was like, “Where am I going to sleep tonight?” And so, yeah, it was a big moment.

And I had to recognize, “It wasn’t life and death. This couldn’t be an adventure. Take these small, tiny little steps forward, backwards, sideways, left, right, because the outcome doesn’t ultimately matter.” It’s that I’m taking action every day toward and through the stressor itself. And that’s actually how I launched my speaking career.

I really had always wanted to be in speaking, and I decided that my first small step was to call myself a speaker. And my second small step was to build a website. And my third small step was to give a free talk. And I just kept repeating this and recognizing this, “I’m not dead yet. I can still use this energy. I can take small steps forward.” So, yeah, there’s one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, cool. Congratulations.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Well, thanks. It’s been fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, can you help us more with the belief side of things? So, it’s like, okay, that’s cool. That worked for you. Okay, that’s cool for the people who put pencils in their mouths in the study. What is some more of the most killer evidence that this belief that stress is advantageous for us is, in fact, true?

(24:20)

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah. The 2013 study that looks at your purpose and meaning and your stress level. This was probably one of the most formative experiments for me in that, you know, I turned 40, I’m freaking out because, “What is life? And how do I make it meaningful?” And, so of course, the super nerd that I am, I looked to the research, I looked to the science.

And it turns out that the number one correlate to a meaningful, purposeful life is stress. So, past stressful events, current state of stress, and even future worry and anxiety. And that tripped me up. Like, that was a, “Whoa! How is this even remotely possible?” Because, to me, I’d spent so much of my time trying to avoid stress, trying to run away from it.

But what if we are, in fact, running away from the very thing that brings our life meaning and purpose? And I think that’s a really powerful reckoning to have, is to say, “Oh, gosh, yeah, when I care about something, I’m stressed. And if I’m stressed, that has the potential to bring purpose and meaning into my life.”

And so, the research that we did last year, I had people walk through my fearless formula for 30 days. They did journaling activity just so we could keep track and make sure that they were following the protocol, and they decreased their perceived stress levels, 85% of them decreased their perceived stress levels, and we had a massive increase in the heart rate variability of the participants.

So, heart rate variability, for anybody that’s not familiar with it, is just a biological measure of how well you adapt to stress. So, more heart rate variability, typically, is better. So that was a pretty convincing nod to this stuff. This stuff, there may be something to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m a big fan of heart rate variability. In fact, I have an Oura ring and a Lief device, which is hardcore.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Nice!

Pete Mockaitis
It sticks to your body and all that. So, what I find really fun about that is, it is not within your conscious control.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
No. Hard numbers. Yep.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like this, your heart is doing what your heart is doing. And you can use some breathing, which helps. But, generally speaking, as you’re living your life, that’s there. So, over these 30 days, their perceived stress decreased. What does that mean? Their meaning was also decreasing? Or, what’s the story here?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Great, great follow up. So, no, because here’s the weird part. So, we did a perceived stress assessment at the beginning and at the end, and we also did a meaning assessment as well. And so, while their perceived stress had decreased, their actual level of stress hadn’t changed. So, this is interesting, right? They’re still reporting the same number of stressors. They’re still reporting the same, of course, cumulative stress. They’re still reporting the same micro-stressors, but their perception of it had shifted.

So, they were able to actually use the stress, their mindset itself had shifted to the point where they could use it differently. So, they’re not changing their stress level. Those stressors are still coming at them. They’re changing their mindset around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, what are the sorts of things they were doing in these 30 days?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
So, they were walking through the T-minus-three technique, the fearless formula. So, they were identifying tigers at the end of the day. So, “What was the tiger that found me today? What stressors did I experience?”

They’d take two minutes to write out all of the stressors. They then take three minutes to transfer that energy to say, “Okay, how can I get curious about this? What did I do? How did I explore this? How did some of it become an adventure?”

And then they’d take the last two minutes of this. Again, it was a six-minute total intervention. And then the last two minutes were, “Where did I point the stress energy? How did I use it? How can I continue to use it tomorrow? What are my follow up actions that I’m going to take?” And so, six minutes, 30 days, pretty massive results.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. So, they’re writing it by hand?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yep, by hand. Oh, good question. Very important. Yeah, again, our brain does a weird thing when we type. It’s not quite as effective. So, by hand, in a journal, that was sent to each of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious, good doctor, what if we find ourselves in the opposite boat in terms of, we’re just kind of dragging, we’re just kind of like not really feeling it, our lives aren’t sort of…?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Lethargically moving through life?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not sort of an easy-peasy vacation, but it’s sort of like, “Hmm, I’m not really stressed. And I’m also not really jazzed. It’s like maybe work is going just okay, and other dimensions of life are fine, but you’re not really feeling all that freaked out or motivated to get after much.”

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, I’d say you’re in the meh zone. Like, “Meh.” Which, you know, look, I’m not going to prescribe anything to you. I’m going to say, “What do you want out of life? If you want meh, you’ve got meh. That’s great.”

Otherwise, I’d say, “Okay, what’s a bigger goal you can pursue? How do you bring stress into your life? How can you create some type-three fun, which is the type where you’re like, ‘This isn’t fun at all. This is just, like, it might be a good story 10 years from now, but it’s not fun.’” You actually hype up the level of stress in your life.

So, yeah, I’d say try some new things. Get out there and find some novelty. Do some discomfort exercises. We talked at the very beginning about staring at each other for, like, a very uncomfortable period of time. Connect with people. Put yourself out in a way that is slightly uncomfortable. And I would keep a journal because we’re really bad at in the moment at assessing our own levels of stress or what we think is going to kill us.

What I often find in these journals, and I keep some that I call a disaster diary, where I follow my own protocol, right? And, like, “Here’s the things that’s going wrong today. And here’s where I think I’m going to die. And this is my tiger.” And then I’ll go back in a month, five months, six months, a year. Most of the things I don’t remember, right?

If it really was memorable, I might have learned something from it, but nothing actually killed me. I mean, as far as I can tell, I’m still in the flesh living and breathing. So, when we recognize that, again, things can shift in perspective a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, tell us, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, I think the biggest thing to mention is to recognize that stress isn’t something to be rid of. And that the more people tell you to get rid of your stress, the more stressed out you’re probably going to become because you believe something is broken with you.

Nothing is broken in you, right? You’re not doing it wrong. You’re not meditating wrong or getting massages wrong. Like, stress is part of life and it should be. So, stop stressing yourself out about stress and use it differently.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I also wanted to get your hot take. Having read this research earlier, I was thinking about how that would be, that’s a great belief. I’d like to have it. And so going through 30 days of journaling sure sounds like a very robust way to get the memo thoroughly.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, it forces you. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, like, okay, message received. But I thought, “Well, hey, we’re rather more susceptible to suggestion in hypnosis.” So, I thought, “Well, there’s probably some cool hypnosis track I can find for this.” And I couldn’t find any of them anywhere because all of the stress-related hypnosis were about how to, like, chill out and relax. It was like, “No, no, I want one that’s going to make me think, ‘Hey, you’re stressed, but good news, buddy.’” You know, and I couldn’t find that anywhere.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, that’s maybe, well, maybe you should create it. Maybe I should create. Maybe we should. This is a new product.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe my soothing voice. Speaking slowly.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
I mean, look, the placebo effect is really powerful. I mean, I’m sure you’ve read the housekeeper study.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, with the calories?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you’re decreasing your body fat and your waist to hip ratio in four weeks because you believe that you’re doing more work or that it is. I think humans are more susceptible than they think they are to shifting their mindsets. And, look, don’t believe it. Try it. Like, force yourself to do it for 30 days and see what happens. Record your heart rate variability. That would be my challenge to you. Yeah, do it. Do it and I expect a full report please.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. Cool beans. All right. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
You know, my favorite quote is probably from my grandmother, who told me when I was freaked out over all of these colleges that I was trying to apply to, and I didn’t know where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my life, she said, “Don’t let your options be your burdens.”

And I thought that was one of the most brilliant things anybody has ever said. I think the world that we live in presents us all with a lot of options at work, at home, in life. We are flooded with opportunity. And the more we can avoid feeling overwhelmed by them, the better off and happier we’ll be.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
My favorite study is probably the milkshake study. Are you familiar with milkshake study? Have you done this already?

Pete Mockaitis
Is this the one where they gave people different calorie contents in the milkshakes, but they lied to them about what’s inside?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so same caloric value in both milkshakes. One was the luxurious milkshake, the high fat content, really high calories, and the other was the diet shake. And, basically, people who had the high fat milkshake said, “Oh, gosh, I’m so full. I couldn’t possibly…” And their ghrelin levels actually increased.

And so, they actually did feel more full. So, there was a physiological response to this high fat milkshake, despite the fact there was no difference between the two. Whereas, the diet milkshake folks were like, “Oh, gosh, I’m starving. I only just had this diet milkshake,” and their ghrelin levels stayed the same.

So, I think this is, to me, one of the best placebo setups ever because you’re seeing not only are people vocalizing and sharing, like, how they feel but their body itself is having a hormonal response as well, which I think is fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
My favorite book is probably Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I think it is a must-read. It is probably marketed toward women. I think it is a must-read for all genders, for all people. It’s just a brilliantly written book about the way the world is perceived and the way we can un-tame ourselves, yeah.

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

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Probably my WHOOP. I love my WHOOP band. I’m constantly, I’m a data freak, so measuring my heart rate variability and all of those things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Favorite habit is reading 10 minutes a day. It’s a simple, straightforward, very small step that I can incorporate at night and it helps me wind down and really get ready for processing all those thoughts as I sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect with folks, and they quote it back to you often?

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
“It’s not a tiger,” “Curiosity and fear cannot coexist,” and, “Invite the tiger for tea.” Those are probably the three. I actually had somebody who got a tattoo of a tiger sitting down for tea. So those are probably the three most resonant quotes.

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

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
My website, RebeccaHeiss.com. You can get in touch with me there. You can email me. You can reach out directly to me. Or, my Instagram is @DrRebeccaHeiss. Please feel free to reach out. Love to hear from you.

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

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
Yeah, my final challenge to each of you is to stay stressed and lean into it. Start charging, running at that roar rather than avoiding the tiger.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Rebecca, thank you.

Dr. Rebecca Heiss
It’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Pete.