Dr Lillian Nejad on Worry Time for Busy Founders

Dr Lilian0:01
Hi everyone. It's good to see some faces from last week and hopefully some new people today. I don't need to give you background, but just for the people who might, who weren't here last week, as Christian said, I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been working as a psychologist for over 25 years. And one of the things that I help people with is managing their thoughts. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So what I'll do is I'm gonna sh— like, I'm gonna share the slides.

Kirsten Scott0:37
So I'll do that and then we can move forward.

Dr Lilian0:45
Okay.

Kirsten Scott0:45
Can everyone see that?

Dr Lilian0:48
All good?

Kirsten Scott0:49
Thank you. Okay.

Dr Lilian0:50
So today we're gonna be talking about how to master your mental game. With a focus on gaining control of your mind. And I wanna just start with a little review from last week, and then we'll focus on today's topic. But by the end of today, I want you to not just feel like you can be a better boss, but that you can also feel like you, you can be a better boss of your thoughts.

Kirsten Scott1:15
That's the goal.

Dr Lilian1:17
So last week we talked about our lemons.

Kirsten Scott1:22
Pelting you from all directions. And the lemons represent the stressors in our lives, and they come from all over the place.

Dr Lilian1:30
So they might come from the workplace environment, they, they might come from your actual job, or they might have to do with things that are going on for us personally.

Kirsten Scott1:43
And they also come from the world around us.

Dr Lilian1:44
So there, you know, the goal really isn't to eliminate stress because that's not possible.

Kirsten Scott1:51
And we also need some stress to perform well, as we discussed as well. But if it's too low or if it's too high, then we don't perform as well as we would like.

Dr Lilian2:04
So we tend to respond in—

Kirsten Scott2:07
to stress or anxiety or really any distress in 4 main ways: physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral. So these responses, they're not mutually exclusive.

Dr Lilian2:21
They're, they're intertwined. They influence each other. They affect one another. And so when we intervene on one area, we tend to have an impact on all the others. And psychologists often will start with cognitive and physical. So last week we focused on the body. And the reason for that was because regulating our bodies is very efficient and effective way to regulate our emotions and to get our minds back on track. And so that we can make better decisions and choices and perform better as leaders as well.

Kirsten Scott3:00
But this week we're gonna focus on our thoughts. Now, we all have habits that we wanna break, but have you ever thought of breaking your mind habits? Mind habits are your automatic thoughts and thought patterns that impact your mindset. And how you feel and behave. So just like habitual behaviors, we develop our mind habits over time through our experiences and our influences.

Dr Lilian3:30
But unlike our behaviors, our mind habits often go unnoticed, unobserved, and unexamined. So some of our mind habits are helpful and healthy, and others are not, as you can imagine. So if you're feeling stuck or stressed or overwhelmed at work or at home, being more aware of how you think can actually help. And when you know what your unhealthy mind habits are, then you can learn the skills and strategies that you need to break them.

Kirsten Scott4:03
So that's the idea.

Dr Lilian4:06
Now I wanted to talk to you about 4 common unhelpful mind habits, particularly of high achievers, but really everybody. So we all have unhealthy mind habits. Um, but these 4 really stand out, um, for me when I'm talking to my clients or just my colleagues. The first one, and I'm gonna read out some kind of, um, descriptions of each and just see how they resonate with you and see if there's, there are some that resonate more than others.

Kirsten Scott4:35
So the first one is excessive worrying.

Dr Lilian4:39
So signs that you have this mind habit, You overprepare for everything in case things go wrong. You find yourself avoiding or procrastinating.

Kirsten Scott4:52
You often feel physically tense. You feel anxious, stressed, or overwhelmed. You may cheque up on people a lot and micromanage, or you might need constant reassurance.

Dr Lilian5:04
You might overanalyze situations and what you could have done differently. And you might find it really hard to get to sleep, or you might wake up in the middle of the night feeling stressed and having racing thoughts. So worrying is a natural phenomenon of our brains. And our minds have created this habit to protect us, but constant, unrelenting, and intrusive worrying and rumination isn't helpful or healthy and actually is really the enemy of productivity.

Kirsten Scott5:37
So that's the first one. The second one is pessimism.

Dr Lilian5:42
So if you have this mind habit, you probably never think anything is going to turn out right. You focus on failures and you ignore or minimise your successes. You have a negative filter over things most of the time. If this sounds like you, you don't—

Kirsten Scott6:01
it's not really about going from a pessimist to a full-on optimist, but remaining a pessimist can drain your energy and motivation, and it can have a negative impact on your relationships at home and at work as well.

Dr Lilian6:17
The next one is perfectionism. So signs you're a perfectionist: you can't stand mistakes, you think you can control everything, or you definitely want to, you have more of a black or white view about your accomplishments or others' accomplishments.

Kirsten Scott6:37
Like, you view yourself as either a success or a complete failure, for instance.

Dr Lilian6:43
Um, and when you expect the impossible, every little mistake can seem like a catastrophe, and so you're never really satisfied.

Kirsten Scott6:52
Um, so striving for perfect is one thing, but expecting perfect can actually lead to perpetual frustration with yourself and others.

Dr Lilian7:02
And the last one that's really common is comparisons. This is when you're always comparing yourself to others.

Kirsten Scott7:11
You're often feeling worthless or less than.

Dr Lilian7:15
You have thoughts of being unworthy or undeserving. You might feel like an imposter, and that leads you not to speak up or to people-please to prove your worth to others. And the result The result often is that you feel exhausted, resentful, guilty, ashamed, anxious, depressed, you name it. It can lead to a range of feelings and mental states. So if you recognise any of these mind habits within yourself, are there any that stand out for you? Now you don't have to share that, that's, you know, but you can if you like. But I don't want you to think that They're unusual. We all have these mind habits to some degree. Some are just more emphasised in us than others.

Kirsten Scott8:09
And it's just useful to know and be—

Dr Lilian8:12
have that self-awareness of like, okay, this is something. This is a pattern of thinking that I have because mind habits are learned. And that means that you can unlearn them.

Kirsten Scott8:25
As well. And that's literally what a lot of the work of a psychologist is.

Dr Lilian8:31
So, and you don't have to see a psychologist because we have these sessions and you can just learn in these kinds of sessions. Okay. So today we're gonna focus on the first mind habit or the, if so, worrying or what I often call, or other people probably call as well, what-ifs and if-onlys. Um, and there's a reason why I think it's useful to start with worry. Um, one is that we all worry.

Kirsten Scott9:02
That's a given.

Dr Lilian9:04
Um, and most of us don't know what to do about it. Uh, and so what I see is that worry is a hidden habit that drives your anxiety, that drains your energy, that derails your focus and disrupts your sleep.

Kirsten Scott9:19
In fact, it's probably the number one thing that I hear in terms of disrupted sleep.

Dr Lilian9:25
So a lot of people have trouble sleeping, either falling asleep or staying asleep, and they're trying all sorts of things like blue light glasses. And, you know, I think, you know, but, but if it, if you're waking up or you're having trouble falling asleep because your mind won't turn off, then those other strategies are probably not going to be that helpful. So worry is really what you need to be focusing on. The other thing is, so a benefit of focusing on worry is that if you break the worry mind habit, then you address these other areas that are detracting from your performance and your ability to lead at work. But the other thing is that if you think about it, the other mind habits are actually worries as well. So if you look at the ones in pink, you can see that those are really related to pessimism. And the green ones are perfectionism and the purple ones are comparisons. And then I've put a couple related to social anxiety as well because that's a really common worry for people around things around like, what do people think of me?

Kirsten Scott10:38
And what if they don't like me? Or what if they don't respect me? So by working on worrying, we're actually helping to address the other mind habits as well. So I thought it was a good place to start. The other aspect of worries is thoughts about the past, and this is often called rumination.

Dr Lilian10:58
So the if-onlys, and this is when your thoughts are stuck in the past and thinking really doesn't lead to any resolution. And so some of the things that you might be thinking are around wishing that you could change things from the past or feeling guilt guilty or ashamed or upset about things that you might have done that you regret and feeling like, if only, you know, getting stuck with, if only I could change things.

Kirsten Scott11:32
So just like when we talked about stress, the aim isn't to get rid of worries completely because one, that's not possible, and two, worries actually serve a useful function. So I think it's helpful to know what that is and to understand the difference between functional and dysfunctional worry. So being worried isn't a particularly pleasant experience.

Dr Lilian12:00
So our first instinct is to just try to get rid of it. But just because worrying doesn't feel good doesn't mean that it's bad. And that's really to do— like, you can apply that to any emotional distress as well. Just because we don't like the feeling of stress or anxiety or anger or sadness or, you know, frustration doesn't mean that they don't serve a useful function.

Kirsten Scott12:27
So the function of worry is basically, it's a part of our anxiety response.

Dr Lilian12:34
So it's basically our cognitive expression of anxiety. And anxiety is how we stay alive.

Kirsten Scott12:41
So anxiety is, you know, helping us detect threat and helping our bodies respond to threat. And worries are our mind's way of trying to detect and predict potential problems and threats in the future so that we can prepare for them, prevent them, or find solutions for them.

Dr Lilian13:03
And in regard to rumination, where you're focused more on the past, it's really Like if you think about it, it's like, well, why do we think about past things so much as well?

Kirsten Scott13:12
It's to help us not make the same mistakes in the future.

Dr Lilian13:17
So they're both really trying to do the same thing. And the purpose is, you know, if it's serving its function well, is that it's helping us respond effectively by preparing for what the future holds or preventing something from happening or solving a problem or maybe get, you know, gaining some support to help us with any of those three things.

Kirsten Scott13:39
Thanks.

Dr Lilian13:41
So examples of when worry can be functional are things like our worries about the environment leading to activism to protect it, worries about a work presentation leading us to prepare better so that we perform well, worries about our health or the health of our loved ones helping us make better choices at the grocery store. It's those sorts of things that worries can really help us with. So when is it unhelpful?

Kirsten Scott14:18
Well, dysfunctional worrying has a— there's a few signs. So if it's excessive, so if it's something that you find yourself frequently doing or that it's lasting a long time, if you're finding that it's increasing distress.

Dr Lilian14:38
And that again is frequent, intense, or lasting a long time.

Kirsten Scott14:44
If your worrying isn't actually leading to any effective action, you're just in a loop of just worrying, worrying, worrying, and nothing else.

Dr Lilian14:53
If your worrying is actually disrupting your daily life, we talked about the ways that that can happen. Like you lose your focus during the day, you can't sleep at night, you're constantly checking up or micromanaging people and they're getting irritated with you.

Kirsten Scott15:08
It's impacting your relationships.

Dr Lilian15:11
And worrying ultimately can lead to health and mental health issues. There is a psychological disorder called generalised anxiety disorder, which is basically chronic worry plus physical impacts as well. So it's the combination of the two.

Kirsten Scott15:33
So things like headaches, stomachaches, muscle tension plus excessive worry for a certain period of time that disrupts your life significantly is generalised anxiety disorder.

Dr Lilian15:48
So what I'm going to be talking to you about today is basically a first-line strategy that if someone was to come with a worry disorder that we would use this.

Kirsten Scott15:59
So it's not only an intervention though, it's also a preventative tool that we can all use.

Dr Lilian16:07
So dysfunctional worrying, the reason why it's useful and important to do something about it is because it can lead to all kinds of behaviours that are going to disrupt your work, your ability to lead, and also your home life. So things like avoidance behaviors, like withdrawing from others, procrastinating, not being able to make the simplest decisions, feeling physically tense and uneasy, feeling anxious and stressed, as we said, sleeping problems, focusing and concentration problems, and as I mentioned, physical and emotional problems as well.

Kirsten Scott16:49
So all of that will impact your ability to be an effective leader.

Dr Lilian16:52
So the aim isn't to get rid of worry altogether because one, we can't, and also we need it. But What we want to do is train our minds to interact differently and more effectively with these thoughts.

Kirsten Scott17:06
So it's working for us and not against us.

Dr Lilian17:11
So I think something that's really helpful and what I do with the people that I see is that I give them some education about thoughts themselves because I think sometimes Well, often that's the first step really, is to know the key facts about thoughts. And many of us treat our thoughts as if they are automatically true, really important, and really meaningful.

Kirsten Scott17:45
They're not. Okay. So thoughts aren't facts.

Dr Lilian17:50
And we have, like some of us have up to 80,000 thoughts a day, right?

Kirsten Scott17:56
At the very least is probably 10,000. So between 10,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day.

Dr Lilian18:02
Some are helpful, some are unhelpful, some are realistic, some are exaggerated, some are fantasy, some are sensible, some are destructive, some are makes no sense, some are just noise, right?

Kirsten Scott18:13
We all have all of these thoughts.

Dr Lilian18:15
It's completely normal to have all of those kinds of thoughts, but we can't possibly pay attention to all of them. So we are paying— we are in our brains in a sense, which are influenced by our experiences and our influences over time, have trained itself to pay attention to certain thoughts. So that doesn't mean that they're more important or more meaningful.

Kirsten Scott18:43
It's just a habit.

Dr Lilian18:45
So if you think about The way our brain filters and selects what we pay attention to, it's like developing these neural pathways in our brain. And the more repeated the patterns of thinking are, the stronger those neural pathways are. And then over time, that becomes the mind habit. And the thing is also that's really important to know is that our brains are wired for survival, right?

Kirsten Scott19:12
That's like the main purpose. For human beings is to survive.

Dr Lilian19:18
So it's designed to scan for risk and potential threat. And so many of our automatic thoughts are actually cautionary in nature. And so it makes sense that we would be attending to a lot of those thoughts because we have so many of those thoughts, 'cause our brains are basically wired to worry.

Kirsten Scott19:43
Right?

Dr Lilian19:45
But if you repeatedly focus on worries, then you're continuing to strengthen that pathway. And you begin to sometimes assume that these thoughts must be more important simply because they keep showing up. And sometimes people even start to believe that thinking something makes it more likely to happen. And so before you know it, you're feeling really anxious and you're feeling out of control. And you're in a loop that you can't— you're like a worry-go-round that you can't get off. So, and then sometimes the things that we do to kind of reduce worry, like overchecking or over-researching or over-reassuring, actually reinforce it.

Kirsten Scott20:30
So it makes it stronger. So thoughts are powerful in that they can influence how you feel and behave, but it doesn't make them true.

Dr Lilian20:45
Um, and like any habit, your thinking patterns are learned and they can be unlearned, as I mentioned before.

Kirsten Scott20:51
And you can't control every thought that pops into your mind, but you can choose which ones you pay attention to, which ones you engage with, and which ones you give meaning to. And you can also choose when, you pay attention to them, which is the crux of one of the strategies that we're gonna be talking about today.

Dr Lilian21:13
Now, another fact is that telling yourself to stop worrying doesn't work. And you probably already know that. I'm sure that everyone's tried at some point in their life to say, "Just stop thinking about this," or have been told by somebody else, "Just, why don't you just stop worrying?" Now there's been some research on this and I think the research is really cool. There's a social psychologist named Daniel Wegner from Harvard and he did this research on thought suppression, basically doing experiments with people to see if it actually works.

Kirsten Scott21:55
Can people suppress thoughts?

Dr Lilian21:57
And I'm going to do the experiment with you. Before I tell you what the outcome of it was. So get ready 'cause we're gonna do something together.

Kirsten Scott22:09
Let me get the timer out so we don't do it forever. Oh, I don't know where I did it. It's fine.

Dr Lilian22:16
What I'm gonna get you to do for the next 30 seconds is to think about whatever you want. You can think literally about anything.

Kirsten Scott22:28
Just don't think about a white bear.

Dr Lilian22:31
You can think about anything else except for a white bear.

Audience member22:34
Okay?

Kirsten Scott22:35
Ready? Go. Okay. That was a little less than 30 seconds, but I think you might have gotten the point.

Audience member23:11
Did—

Dr Lilian23:11
who was able to suppress the white bear thought?

Kirsten Scott23:15
Anybody? So-so?

Dr Lilian23:17
Did it come in your mind at all?

Kirsten Scott23:20
Yes.

Dr Lilian23:21
How about you, Kirsten? A little bit.

Kirsten Scott23:24
Yeah.

Dr Lilian23:25
So what he found with his participants is he gave them 5 minutes, not 30 seconds. And he said those directions. And what he found was that they did think about the white bear.

Kirsten Scott23:36
They were unable to suppress it. And not only did he find that, but he found that with future experiences that not only was it unsuccessful in the moment, but also it could have a rebound effect later.

Dr Lilian23:51
So when they were allowed to think about whatever they wanted, including a white bear, they thought about it more than somebody who never was told to suppress the thought in the first place. So when you try to stop worrying, it's actually having the opposite effect over time.

Kirsten Scott24:12
So completely counterproductive. So what can we do instead? We can do something called worry time.

Dr Lilian24:22
Now, I don't know if you guys have heard about this. What I found when, I mean, I've been working with this strategy since I started. So this strategy comes from the 1980s. No, I did not start my career in the 1980s, but this is when it started. And I used it as soon as I, you know, was starting to see clients because it is a first-line strategy for worry, meaning this is like one of the gold standard interventions that we use with clients. Now, for some reason, this has never really made it to the public. And so that's another reason why I think it's really important to talk about it because it is such an effective strategy and nobody knows about it. So what is it? It's basically setting aside time to worry. So it's creating boundaries for your worries by setting aside a specific time and a specific place to address your problems. Now, one of the reasons why this works, and this was found with some researchers in the US as well, his name is Borkovic and he worked with a research group. And what they were trying to do is they were trying to find strategies that would help people who couldn't sleep because they couldn't stop thinking. And they developed this strategy and they did some research on it. And what they found was a couple of things.

Kirsten Scott25:45
One is delaying your worry helps you let go of it in the moment. So instead of telling yourself to stop worrying, which is counterproductive, if you say, I've heard you.

Dr Lilian26:02
I'm going to worry about you at 5 o'clock today. Your brain can let go of it so that you can focus on what you want to do in that moment.

Kirsten Scott26:11
That might be work. It might be sleep.

Dr Lilian26:13
It might be having fun. It could be anything.

Kirsten Scott26:15
The second thing they discovered is, and the function of worry is that we, we can be triggered by anything, right?

Dr Lilian26:25
So A person or a place or a situation, or even a smell can trigger like a worry.

Kirsten Scott26:35
And so creating a worry time can actually train our brains to reduce the triggers down to one. It's just our worry time that triggers worry.

Dr Lilian26:46
That's what we're trying to train our brain to do. So worry time helps you gain control over how often you worry.

Kirsten Scott26:54
And how long you worry.

Dr Lilian26:57
But it can also, yeah, so it can also limit your worry to like 15 to 30 minutes a day and lessen your urgency to think about worries throughout the rest of the day. So I go through how you do it and then we'll go through it in a little bit more detail. So how it works is you choose a worry time. Generally 15 to 30 minutes a day. And then you choose a worry place. So you choose a place that you can access every day, but not your bedroom, because we don't want to associate our bedroom with worry. And we make a commitment to worry only during that time and in that place. And if you think about it, it's like setting up a worry time. It sounds a bit silly, but it's not dissimilar to the meetings that you set up at work. Like you set aside time with your colleagues to meet in a certain place to address certain issues and problems at work, right?

Kirsten Scott27:58
But in this case, you're setting up a meeting for yourself to address your worries and your problems at an efficient, effective time, right?

Dr Lilian28:08
And the agenda items are your worries, right? So just because you set up a worry time doesn't mean you're not gonna worry outside that time. So the idea is that when those worries pop up, you actually write them down. You write them down. And I'll tell you the old school way and the new school way.

Kirsten Scott28:24
So the old school way is, 'Cause this was developed in the '80s, right? We lived very differently in the '80s and the '90s.

Dr Lilian28:33
Um, you would write them down on little pieces of paper or note cards, and then you would contain it, like have a literal container, like a jar or a box that, that was placed in your place. You know, like whether that might be a corner of your house or your study or somewhere, somewhere that you could get to easily, maybe a place at work. Um, and then in your worry time, you would just take them out, right? You would take them out and you would do what you wanted to do with them. What I have found with my clients over time is that the old-school way is a bit messy and not particularly private. And so people had stopped doing it because it seems too hard and didn't really fit into kind of modern life. So sometimes people will still like to use a pen and paper method, like they might have their own diary or journal that they carry around and that's their container. And I think that's fine if like that's the preference. And then, but other people might want to use an app because it's just easier and more practical. So I actually, so I'll tell you a little bit about that in a minute, but what I would like to do first is like go through some of the steps with you so, so that you're actually starting the process even if you don't want to do it, um, just getting a sense of what it feels like to set it up in case you want to do it at some point. Or, or you might know a worrier and you might want to explain it to somebody that you know. Everyone knows a worrier.

Kirsten Scott30:11
For me, it's my mother.

Dr Lilian30:15
Um, it does tend to affect women more than men.

Kirsten Scott30:19
All right, so I would like everyone to think about When would be the best time to address your problems?

Dr Lilian30:31
When you're picking a time, you want it to be initially a time that you would do ideally every day at the same time just to create that habit. After, you know, after you do it for a couple of weeks habitually, then you can like play with it and adjust it to your needs. But you want to choose like 15-minute to a 30-minute slot. Often people will choose a time in the evening, like after work, before dinner, because it's just, that might have some free time then. And also like you've got the worries during the day and then you can do something about them then. And that really will help with sleep as well 'cause you've already dealt with the things that you're worried about. So like for some people that might be 5:30 to 6:00, it just depends on what your schedule is, but it doesn't have to be. In the evening, can be any time. So if everyone just on, on a piece of paper or somewhere in your notes on your phone, you can just choose a time that you think would work for you.

Kirsten Scott31:35
And then once you've done that, I want you to think about the place. Now you might have a couple places.

Dr Lilian31:42
You might have a place at work and you might have a place at home, or maybe some of you work from home and then it's just one place. But it could be like a particular table and chair that you have, or it could be like a corner of a room or just somewhere convenient. You don't want it to obviously be your bedroom as we discussed. You don't want it to be somewhere that you get too comfortable. You don't wanna be there for a long time, right? So you wanna be there like 15, 30 minutes. You're just, it's very, you know, focused time. You're gonna be processing and addressing your worries, and I'll talk to you about how you might do that. So yeah, thinking about what place might that be for you. If you're actually using a physical container, then you might have like, you might think about, well, what's a good private place? Or, you know, how do I keep my things private? So think about that. And then what I'd like you to do is just take a few minutes and maybe write down like 5 or 10 worries that you have.

Kirsten Scott32:46
They might be ones to do with work.

Dr Lilian32:50
They might just be like everyday worries, things that you, you know, repeatedly worry about. Maybe don't make them too serious and heavy for this session. This is just, you're not, we can't process these today, but like think about just like the everyday common general worries that you might have. Some of you might have been running late to the session, for instance, and you were worried about being on time or You might've had a headache and you weren't sure if you, you know, like what if you missed it or there might be a range of, or like, you know, your kids were taking like half an hour to put their socks on before you took them to school. That used to happen to me every morning.

Kirsten Scott33:30
Even now, actually, even though they're teenagers.

Dr Lilian33:34
So yeah, just take some time and write. I'll just give you some quiet time to write 5 or 10 worries down.

Kirsten Scott33:45
So— How's everyone going with that? You ready to move forward? I'm just showing you some of my, my list this week.

Dr Lilian35:22
Don't ask me some questions that I don't know the answers to.

Kirsten Scott35:24
Okay. Cause I'm really worried about that.

Audience member35:28
Okay.

Dr Lilian35:29
So the idea is that once it's written down or recorded in some way that you can contain it and then let it go until your worry time. And like I mentioned, you can contain it in that old school way, which is paper and pen, which a lot of people still really like. And then a physical container, or you can use an app. I just wanted to let you know that I've developed an app for this. It is It is free and it is completely private and we don't collect any data from our users. So it's probably one of the safest mental health apps out there.

Kirsten Scott36:10
And it lets you flexibly schedule your worry time and it gives you a safe and private place to store your worries.

Dr Lilian36:19
You can do that by text or by audio. And then it gives you a really clear framework to address your problems when you're in worry time, which I'll go through with you today. So you don't need to use an app.

Kirsten Scott36:33
As I said, it just might for some people be a more convenient way to implement the strategy.

Dr Lilian36:39
So think about like what your preference would be. Would you prefer to be writing things down, like in a journal with, with with a pen or having like a jar or box. Sometimes like people like to decorate it as well and, you know, it's like their container. Or would you prefer an app that you would carry around, would have with you like wherever you went so that you record your, you can record your worries straight away and might give you some more privacy as well. Whatever your preference is, it doesn't matter.

Kirsten Scott37:15
It just matters that is working for you.

Dr Lilian37:18
So now I just wanted to explain how you might use your worry time because there's scheduling your worry time and keeping your worry time, but then what are you meant to do with it? So the first thing that I think is really helpful is to work out what kind of worry it is. And I have found it useful to categorise it in one of three ways.

Kirsten Scott37:45
First is solvable, second unsolvable, and third solved. So solvable worries are worries that you can do something about, right? So they include problems and circumstances that you can change or situations that you have control over.

Dr Lilian38:05
That could be anything. Probably a lot of things that you worry about that are work-related are solvable problems. Or they might have to do with disagreements or deadlines or performance or bills or things like that.

Kirsten Scott38:20
So that's solvable.

Dr Lilian38:23
Solvable is pretty self-explanatory.

Kirsten Scott38:26
Unsolvable, this is where the tricky worries are. These are the ones that you can't fix. Now, there might be a number of reasons for that.

Dr Lilian38:38
They might be completely out of your control.

Kirsten Scott38:40
Like, for instance, if you are afraid of flying and you worry that the plane is going to crash, it's not a lot you can do about that, right?

Dr Lilian38:50
There are things like things that have happened in the past. Like, you know, if you put your foot in your mouth in a conversation and you worry about having done that and that the person doesn't like you, or you made a bad impression, first impression.

Kirsten Scott39:07
Well, you can't really fix that.

Dr Lilian39:10
Potentially there's parts of that you can solve, but a lot of the things in the past, like, especially if it happened like 10 years ago and you're still thinking about it, probably not something that you can do anything about. Sometimes worries are really vague, right? They, we might just be like, "Oh, I just feel like something bad's gonna happen," right?

Kirsten Scott39:30
There's nothing you can really do about that.

Dr Lilian39:34
And sometimes there are things that are like, maybe just really unrealistic or like exaggerated.

Kirsten Scott39:40
You know, we talked about being perfectionistic or pessimistic.

Dr Lilian39:44
You might find some of your worries related to that.

Kirsten Scott39:46
Like, if I quit, I'm never gonna find another job, you know, something like that. So those are kind of the unsolvable ones.

Dr Lilian39:55
And then we have the category solved. So solved, the reason we have this category is because the research shows that most of our worries are just a waste of time. 90% of them never happen. So one of the more recent studies asked a group of worriers to record their worries for 10 days and then to report back over 30 days if any of them came true. So 91.4% of their worries didn't come true. 91.4%. And for 25% of the people, none of their worries came true.

Kirsten Scott40:41
None. And for the ones that did, so the worries that did come true, a third of them, the people thought turned out better than they expected, right?

Dr Lilian40:52
So they've come true, but we've coped better than we, you know, we imagined that we would cope, or they weren't as bad as we thought that they were going to be. So they still weren't worth worrying about. The other thing that was really interesting about this study is that they were also asked to record how likely they thought the worries were gonna come true. And they were asked to record how likely through intuition and through logic. And what they found was that both intuition and logic did not predict worry. Like the outcomes very well. So, so your ability to predict whether worry is gonna come true or not is probably not great. And most of your worries aren't gonna come true.

Kirsten Scott41:41
And even the ones that do are probably gonna work out better than you thought anyway, right? So we have this solved section for those worries.

Dr Lilian41:50
By the time you get to your worry time, you probably find that a lot of your worries aren't worth worrying about.

Kirsten Scott41:57
Okay?

Dr Lilian41:58
So what do you do with these worries? So if you've got some solvable worries, I think this is probably the most self-explanatory one, and this is the one you probably need the least help with because as business owners and leaders, you're solving problems all the time and you don't need to be told how to solve a problem. These are some of the steps, you know, brainstorm and evaluate and choose and create a plan and take action. Review whether it's worked, reward yourself. Hopefully you're doing that sometimes, rewarding yourself for a job well done or even for trying to solve a problem. So, you know, in terms of this one, it can be helpful to prioritise the worries in your worry time that, that are things that you can do right now, like things that you can address. Right now, things that are really important to you to address right now, or things that might provide the greatest relief for you if they're solved. But in terms of solvable worries, that's probably the easiest ones to deal with. It's the unsolvable ones where we can get stuck in those kind of loops where we're just thinking and thinking and thinking, and it's not Nothing's happening. We're just getting more and more distressed. If you keep trying to change the unchangeable and control the uncontrollable and avoid the unavoidable, you will keep getting caught in this unwinnable struggle.

Kirsten Scott43:34
So the task here is to not solve but accept. This is probably the most difficult skill for people.

Dr Lilian43:47
To just accept reality as it is. Because what we get stuck in is what we want it to be and what we think it should be. But if we can actually accept reality as it is, then we let go of that struggle and then we can start focusing on what we can actually do and not what we can't do. So When we're not accepting reality, what happens is we're trying to deny it, like putting your head in the sand. We're trying to push our thoughts and feelings away, which, as we've talked about today, doesn't work very well. We try to escape our feelings through unhelpful behaviours like drinking or substance use or overeating or gambling. We spend a lot of time complaining and wishing that things were different. We spend a lot of energy ruminating and blaming and, um, or feeling guilty about how we feel.

Kirsten Scott44:51
So in regard to these kinds of worries, it's really about acknowledging that you have the worries and accepting that some of them just aren't solvable and also accepting some of the distress that goes with that.

Dr Lilian45:07
So it's not saying that you're not going to feel distressed about it.

Kirsten Scott45:09
You might still feel distressed about it, but then you just need to learn how to manage that.

Dr Lilian45:16
So some of the acceptance strategies I've listed here, and I can't go through all of them in detail, but some of them are mindfulness. We've talked about mindfulness last session, but it's essentially noticing and observing. And in regard to worry, there are some really good mindfulness Exercises where you're actually noticing and observing your thoughts. And you're doing that in a nonjudgmental way. You're not attaching meaning. You're just looking at, you're just observing the thoughts moving through your mind without trying to change them or control them or engage with them, right? It's just an observation.

Kirsten Scott45:59
I have a couple of recordings for mindfulness of thoughts that you can listen to.

Dr Lilian46:07
On Insight Timer and Spotify, and I can show you the QRs for that again this week. Another strategy is called cognitive diffusion.

Kirsten Scott46:17
This is, this comes from a therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

Dr Lilian46:23
So it's very focused on acceptance.

Kirsten Scott46:26
And it's really a technique that just allows you to create some distance between you and your thoughts by, again, by observing them.

Dr Lilian46:33
But it's almost like telling yourself, I can, we can do it if you want.

Kirsten Scott46:37
Do you wanna do a quick one? All right, so let's think of a thought.

Dr Lilian46:42
Does anyone like when they do something wrong, just like call themselves an idiot or like dumb or like anything like that?

Kirsten Scott46:51
Does that ever happen?

Dr Lilian46:53
I think a lot of people do that. I just wanna do something that resonates with people. We don't have to do that one if you don't want to.

Kirsten Scott47:02
You can think of your own, but then, so what I want you to do is think of that thought and then tell yourself, I'm noticing I'm having the thought.

Dr Lilian47:21
And now I want you to tell yourself, I'm noticing that I'm observing myself having the thought.

Kirsten Scott47:39
So you can keep doing that.

Dr Lilian47:41
Like, you can keep removing yourself from it over and over again. But when you actually add that observation aspect to your thoughts, so it's not just, I'm thinking this, I'm thinking I'm an idiot.

Kirsten Scott47:54
It's like, I've noticed that I'm calling myself an idiot.

Dr Lilian48:00
And then I'm observing that I'm noticing that I'm calling myself an idiot.

Kirsten Scott48:05
It really feels different.

Dr Lilian48:08
That's what cognitive diffusion— cognitive diffusion, that's one aspect. Cognitive diffusion can also include like changing your relationship to the thought by changing like how you would say it to yourself. For instance, like If someone has the thought, I'm an idiot, I'm just gonna use I'm an idiot, singing it to yourself instead of saying it to yourself, like changing how it actually, you hear it in your brain, right? Playing with it a little bit or drawing it like in pretty colors, like giving yourself like different experiences with that thought.

Kirsten Scott48:43
That's another way to do cognitive defusion. Okay?

Dr Lilian48:46
So it's like, these are just thoughts.

Kirsten Scott48:48
It's like, They're just a bunch of letters strung into words strung together.

Dr Lilian48:53
They don't have to mean anything. We don't have to take that thought and stab ourselves in the chest with it, right?

Kirsten Scott49:00
We can just notice it, identify it, and let it pass through our brains.

Dr Lilian49:06
That's the idea. Self-compassion, also sometimes called self-validation, is really just The acknowledgement that you're having an emotional response and that this response makes sense given the circumstances and it's okay.

Kirsten Scott49:23
It's okay to have, to be worried. It's okay to feel anxious. It makes sense in this situation.

Dr Lilian49:32
Or even if you don't think it makes sense, you can even say, "It doesn't even make sense, but it's okay.

Kirsten Scott49:37
I don't understand why it's here, but it's, this is my reality and that's okay." That's what self-compassion is.

Dr Lilian49:46
So yeah, those are probably the top 3. In the app, if you download it, it will give you these strategies. So if you pick a category, if it's solvable, it'll give you problem-solving strategies. If it's unsolvable, it'll give you these strategies and it will describe them for you.

Kirsten Scott50:03
And then if it's solved, it gives you the reflect strategies.

Dr Lilian50:08
So for the solved ones, you might think, well, they're solved, so I don't need to think about it or do anything about it. But actually, these are gonna be 90% of your worry. So it is a really good idea to think about how much time are you spending worrying about things that eventually work themselves out? Do you often underestimate your ability to cope with things? Do you tend to think about the worst-case scenario? Is this the best use of your time? And really familiarise yourself with these kinds of thoughts so that the next time you think them, you can be like, oh, that's one of those solved ones. That's one of the ones that I don't need to worry about.

Kirsten Scott50:46
And then you've literally just decluttered your mind, right?

Dr Lilian50:51
Imagine what you can do with your mind time that you've freed up, right?

Kirsten Scott50:57
With letting go of all of those kinds of worries.

Dr Lilian51:01
Okay, so that's essentially it. I'm gonna give you, so these are the QR codes for Contain Your Brain. Or you can just go into your app store and punch in Contain Your Brain.

Kirsten Scott51:12
It, like I said, it's free, it's private, it's safe, and it has all the strategies contained within it.

Dr Lilian51:20
And if you go to the website, it will explain more about the science. And there's a video that explains how to do it as well.

Kirsten Scott51:28
Um, and a lot of other information about how worries impact on various areas of life. So that's that.

Dr Lilian51:36
And then we have just the resources from last time where you can find mindfulness exercises for—

Kirsten Scott51:49
that will be helpful for worry, which are the mindfulness of thoughts exercises.

Dr Lilian51:53
And you can find them either on Spotify or Insight Timer. And then I just wanted to leave you with this quote, which it's not lined up very well, but I don't know if you guys saw this, um, reel yesterday or the day before with Eileen Gu talking about, um, how she thinks.

Kirsten Scott52:15
Some—

Dr Lilian52:15
a reporter asked her, um, about her thinking processes because they were struck by the depth of the way that she responded to things. And it was a brilliant response and this was just one quote from it. So if you have a look for that whole clip, you can actually, I think I posted it on my Instagram account, which is Dr. Lilian Nejat, but you can find it anywhere and listen to the whole thing. It was really lovely and she's 22 years old and she's figured it out. So yeah, very good, Eileen.

Kirsten Scott52:48
Well done.

Dr Lilian52:51
And yeah, I hope that that was a helpful strategy and topic to talk about today, and I appreciate you being here, um, to listen.

Audience member53:03
Thank you, Dr. Lilian. Um, and I think we can all agree as busy founders, like, it's so important to have not only the skills that we learned last week but particularly today's. I think we can be so hard on ourselves, particularly when we get really stressed and busy, and it's really important even just finding those 5 minutes to do the worry exercise or some of the exercises that we did last week just to destress and be more kind to ourselves. So, um, on that note, guys, thank you again for joining. Um, and as always, you will be able to rewatch these sessions on the video content library, and I would really encourage you to do so. So thank you everyone, and we'll see you all soon.