Latest / The Growth Project / Episode 352: Understanding Mental Rest and Why It Matters (Part 1)

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Episode 352: Understanding Mental Rest and Why It Matters (Part 1) · The Growth Project

• 0:00
  You.
• 0:03
  Welcome to The Growth Project, a podcast brought to you by Apollo's doctor Drew Brandon here today. Happy to be joined by Doctor Gabby Cobb. Yes, I think I did that right. You got it. Yes. Okay. And Gabby, like this is your back to back weeks right out of the gate right now.
• 0:22
  How's that feel to be jumping in the growth project back to back weeks? It's exciting. It's, not something I ever initially found myself really getting into, but I'm loving it so far. The world of podcasting and, just getting the chance to, to talk about all of these topics with a wide audience. That's exactly right. Yeah.
• 0:40
  Well, we're super glad that you're back. And we're going to kind of jump into, a topic that I'm excited to talk about today. And just as we kind of get into it. Just for our listeners to have the benefit of it, today's topic is, one of the things that Gabby was heavily focused on in her dissertation research.
• 0:58
  Correct? Correct, yes. Which, if you're not familiar with kind of how this whole PhD thing works, that is like the massively challenging hurdle we all have to get over along the way.
• 1:09
  but we're always happy on the other side of it. Yeah. Would you agree? Absolutely agree with it. I will say, you know, when I started grad school and even my master's research was not ever something that I really knew what all went into it, the writing side and, the literature reviews, the write up of your results and discussion.
• 1:29
  So, it's a grueling process, but one that I'm thankful for agreed on was, quite a while ago, and I didn't agree with everything you just said. Okay, so as we jump into it, here's what we're talking about today is,
• 1:42
  the concept of mental rest. Yeah. And specifically, we're going to be touching on the different types of how different types of demands impact mental rest and well-being.
• 1:54
  And, you know, Gabby, before I toss it to you to, to share a little bit about the framework of that, I just want to mention this, although a lot of the data that we're going to be referring to was the data you collected at Florida State and most other college athletes, everything. There's just so much crossover here.
• 2:11
  Yeah. Because although student athletes are certainly challenged with a high level demands or in a very competitive arena, so on and so forth. The same would be true for, those working professionals. Many people listen to our podcast. You face high demands. You are in a heavily competitive. Absolutely. And so we know these concepts and talking about mental rest and well-being.
• 2:34
  I think it's a fantastic one for our listeners because regardless of your industry, regardless of where you are in your career development, this conversation is application to you. Absolutely. Yeah. And on that topic, you know, a lot of what got me interested into this area of research was actually the the work that was done out there when it came to organizations and employee well-being and helping just increase productivity in the workforce.
• 3:00
  So it's very applicable. Awesome. Okay. All right. Now, why don't we start here? Can you share a little bit about, like, give us the we're talking about the weight demands impact, mental rest and well-being. Give us a 30,000ft view in terms of like like here here's what you decided to study. Here's why. Give me a little bit of background.
• 3:21
  And in terms of kind of how you decided to go this path. Yeah. So, it it's a unique path for sure. I remember when I started my master's at Florida State, Doctor David Eccles, he ended up being my advisor all throughout, my schooling. And he had just started, you know, with his research on mental rest, looking more so at coaches, professional athletes and coaches and, got involved in his research group.
• 3:50
  I had never really heard of mental rest at that point.
• 3:53
  physical rest was a big area of focus. I mean, you got to get eight hours of sleep. You need to give your body a break. Do your ice baths, do your recovery. But, I was like, mental rest. What is that? So I went to his research groups and started to just discover how much goes into recovery that isn't physical.
• 4:13
  I mean, there's all these different areas that we need to prioritize to recovery. You know, your cognitive state, your emotional states, along with the physical. Right. So that kind of just started me on the pathway and decided to do my thesis on the topic of mental rest and understanding. You know, how it's actually related to well-being and depression in college athletes and then just continued on that pathway all the way through and good mentorship to.
• 4:43
  Yes, absolutely.
• 4:45
  Okay. So just really to recalibrate as we're focused on this interaction between how demands impact mental well-being and rest. So Gabby get us frame this up for us, please.
• 4:56
  Yeah. We get into that category of demands. And my understanding of that would be the things that come at us in life that, pressure test us. That push us. But I know that that all demands are not the same. Right. Categories are the same. So walk us through please. In that space of the demands we experience in life, what are some of the categories and how should we be thinking about what that means?
• 5:19
  Yeah, definitely. Well we've really categorized it by three main areas when it comes to understanding the types of demands that individuals experience. We of course, have your physical demands. I think that that is especially in the sport world, what people are most familiar with, you know, your training intensity, your recovery expectations, the fatigue that you experience post, post training.
• 5:44
  And so it's all of the load, you know, that you're putting on your body the wear and tear. That's really your physical demands.
• 5:50
  Then you have your cognitive demands, which is more of your brain power being used. Right? So things like decision making, reaction time, tactical and technical decisions that you have to make on field. And then with student athletes, of course, they have their academic pressures, being able to have the time to study and do homework.
• 6:09
  And that takes a load on you cognitively.
• 6:12
  And then, of course, you have emotional demands. And these are, really, I think some of the most important ones to look at because they, they do linger with you. I think they are the most unaddressed when we look at recovery,
• 6:28
  things like, you know, interpersonal pressures, whether that be with your teammates, your coaches, friends, family, any type of relationship stress that you experience, competition stress, as well as any social expectations that you feel are present, all of that puts a demand on you emotionally.
• 6:48
  Okay. So that's a really good framework for us in this category. So let's let's kind of let's hit the rewind about that. And I want to kind of go through each of these demands and expand on them a little bit. And then I'll tell you as we talk about it for our listeners I think a really interesting activity, use a quick activity you could be doing as a listener is as we track through them, do a self-assessment.
• 7:09
  Yeah. So if you think about a basic 1 to 10, these are really easy. One would indicate, gosh, I'm really having a hard time in this area, right? I am feeling a lot of stress, a lot of strain on me not doing so well.
• 7:22
  Alternatively ten would be I'm crushing here, right? And gosh, I feel like I'm doing really, really well and I'm managing my demands effectively in that type of stuff.
• 7:32
  let's go through and expand on it this way. And I want to think about like I see the angle here of for athlete athletes, training load and things like that.
• 7:41
  What would the translation of that be like? But I'm not an athlete, man. A working professional is I think about physical demands. I would go down that path. Okay, I'm not getting enough sleep. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm, I'm running hard. I've got a lot going on. I'm going to bed a little bit later than I should be.
• 7:59
  Yeah, I'm getting up early because I have so much to do. I've got kids that need me, carpools to drive, things like that. I'm not sticking to my physical routine plan. Yeah, like I really could be, you know? No, I should be. I'm not doing it. What are some other physical demands that would be normal that people might be experiencing?
• 8:17
  Gabby. Yeah, I think that, you know, the you touched on a few there that are great. The the process of having to wake up early, that's a toll on you physically. Cutting your sleep short. You know, if you have a commute to work the way that you're sitting in a car for extended periods of time,
• 8:34
  that's a toll on you physically sitting at a desk for, you know, seven, eight hours a day.
• 8:40
  That's a toll on you physically. I mean, it's not uncommon for people who are in the workforce to have back pain or, neck pain. So that is, again, a very big physical toll. Sure. And that to me is not going away. Nope. Because, it's highly unlikely. Yeah. Your employer and say, you know, a back is a feeling too.
• 8:59
  Yeah. I'm going to kind of pack it in. Exactly. And head home and probably not how that's going to go. Exactly. But there's a long list of physical demands. You know, certainly some are unique to an athlete population. There's a ton of generalizability to those of us who are on the other side of those kind of things, working world, that type of stuff.
• 9:19
  And, you know, it's pretty normal. I mean, I think about the examples of, if we're honest with ourselves as adults, we're really good at, like feeling all of these physical demands and yet making no changes, no changes at all. And just being okay with them is, okay, but not okay. It's really how I explain it. You know, you you recognize that, you know, you're in pain or that you're worn down physically.
• 9:43
  But are you actively doing anything to aid that process and get better? Most of the time, yeah. Oftentimes the answer is no. Yeah. No. Your body is physically. Yeah. Signals. Yeah. Some things aren't right. Yeah I mean outside of sleep. You know, what's something you do to recover from the physical stress of your day job. Yeah. And, you know, maybe you wake up and you do five minutes of morning stretches.
• 10:09
  I, I don't know anybody who does it. Yeah. Personally. But that's something that would be important there, you know. And we know these things. Well, it's like we've talked about on the growth project many times. If the only thing it took to change behavior was information, right. We'd have way, way better looking, you know, stats and data.
• 10:30
  Yeah. Indicators when it comes to health outcomes. And in the world. Absolutely. Okay. So there's physical demands. Yeah. Let's go further and deeper on cognitive. Yeah. Really what we're talking about here is things such as decision making skills and navigating, you know, multitasking kind of handling the complexities of life. And what we're saying is, gosh, the more of that it's on you, the more it's going to affect you and just drain your battery, so to speak.
• 10:57
  Correct? Absolutely. Yeah. And I love your verbiage there of draining your battery. That's exactly what you're doing. You have so much battery power each day, right. And the more that you have to put into decision making or multitasking or, balancing, you know, scheduling what you're going to do with your employees, meetings that you have, all of that is a cognitive demand that you have to think about and process.
• 11:23
  And, it does take, again, a toll on that battery. And, you know, I heard it I remember this way back in graduate school when my professors explained to me this way is when it comes to cognitive load and cognitive, demands, it's basically the equivalent of a few. Imagine how you get up every morning. And if someone is going to sound a little person, it's not real.
• 11:45
  So it's okay, right? It's as if someone would come at the beginning of your day, right when you get going and stick a needle in your back. And the what's happening and start to just slowly kind of pull back on the model. Right. And so as they're pulling back throughout the day they're just just sucking you. Yeah.
• 12:05
  Your energy just draining you. And the more demands you have on you the faster that's happening. Yeah right. The faster the energy is, is being sucked out of you and draining you. Yeah. So it becomes kind of a, I mean, a mathematical battle in the sense of like if the if that load is on you and it's taking for you some massive withdrawals in the absence of deposits, you're in good shape.
• 12:30
  Exactly. Yeah. And that's where this topic of mental rest becomes really important for this area is what are you doing to to slow that or to replenish it. Right. And these things also interact obviously. Absolutely. Yeah. Like even the first two we've just touched on in terms of the demand categories, you think about how okay, back to physical I'm not sleeping very well.
• 12:52
  What does that mean. That means I'm probably living with higher levels of cortisol. Yeah. What do we know about how cortisol affects decision making. It's not good. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good news to put it very bluntly and succinctly. But cortisol impairs decision making. You. Absolutely. So okay so we've worked through physical we walk through cognitive Gabby say a little bit more.
• 13:13
  And what are some examples of how kind of the emotional demands could really show up in the life of, say, maybe a busy, working professional?
• 13:20
  emotions we experience them all day, every day,
• 13:23
  they can be good. They can be bad. And I think that a big part of where working professionals experience that could be, yeah, this emotion of I'm not good enough or worry that, you know, you're not doing enough, at work, worrying that your company isn't producing the way it should be, in terms of numbers and that worry, it just sits and it ruminates and it drains you, without you
• 13:50
  even really noticing that it's happening. Yeah. And that's a great example I think especially in like let's think about maybe you're in some type of commercial sales type industry. Yeah. People are. And the reality is there can often be many things that are indicators impacting the performance of you and your team that you can do nothing about.
• 14:12
  Yeah. But despite the fact that you can't do anything about them, the normal thing that we hear over and over and over again is because we care, because we have ownership over our performance. It is just emotionally defeating. It's exhausting. It takes a toll on us and people often, unfortunately, kind of living with this, this, this idea, this perception that they have way more control over things than they really do.
• 14:39
  Right? Yeah. I think if you want to get it right in the emotions, the emotional department, one of the place you've got to start is recognizing what you control versus what you do. I completely agree, and I like where you're hitting on there is emotions happen because we care and we're so big about having passion with what you do.
• 14:58
  Right. But it's passion. It's a great thing. It fuels you, it drives you. It can also drain you. And that's not talked about enough. I don't think right. Okay. So just before we transition from this, I want to make sure our listeners are really, really clear on if you get to the end of your day. And this is probably going to be true for many people, when you get to the end of the day and you're kind of sitting there and you're like, gosh, I'm really tired.
• 15:24
  Like I'm exhausted, I'm worn out. Why do you feel that way? We just told you why you feel that way. Because a normal human experience, day in and day out is there's physical demands on me. There are cognitive demands on me. They're emotional demands on me. And yes, certain periods of time in life are more demanding than others.
• 15:44
  But in this day and age when most people are kind of like running, really hard and or overcommitted and there they're saying yes to almost everything, we're doing some of this to ourselves. We are unfortunately. Yeah. Okay. So we've clarified, Gabby, the domain, what demands are and how they fit into categories. Let's now get into touching on this whole concept, because I got a feeling our listeners ever have a mental rest about what in the world is that?
• 16:07
  Right. So we're going to spend some time now clarifying what mental rest is. And then, you know, just to get everybody excited, we're actually going to eventually be dedicating a follow up episode to episode two of this series is going to focus on a lot of application of how you put this into play. But let's first discuss what is mental rest.
• 16:26
  Yeah, so it's the active side of rest that is not physical in nature. So, you know, I always think about it like this umbrella approach where you have recovery. That's your big umbrella, right. That breaks down into physical and mental rest. And you know, we can probably quite easily think of things that we associate with physical rest. Right?
• 16:49
  We already touched on that a little bit. But sleeping, you know, ice baths, massages, you know, just giving your body a break. There's your cold plunge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cold punches, saunas, everything. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's gained a lot of traction that side of rest. Yeah.
• 17:11
  We're always finding ways to help the body recover, but mental rest is.
• 17:16
  What are we doing to help the mind recover? What are we doing to help your brain recover? And that's that's really this idea of mental rest. So before we get into that, too deeply, you know, the data, whether or not I do, I would imagine that the most devoted cold plunger who isn't engaging in adequate mental rest is getting much less of a benefit from all that plunging than he or she would otherwise.
• 17:45
  Absolutely. Because, yeah, think about it. I mean, you're putting your body into a state of shock when you go into, a cold plunge, an ice bath. Right? And, if you're already mentally drained and you don't have the cognitive ability to process that, you know that, right? Right. Then you're actually stressing your your system out more. Your stress response system is actually being elevated.
• 18:08
  So you're not getting as much benefit as you probably think you are. So hey, those leading cold plunge manufacturers are not okay. Yeah. They're not sharing. Yeah. You've got to tackle both sides of the coin. Yeah. You know your cold plunges out there or that you. Yeah yeah. But don't don't miss. Yeah exactly. Yeah. So that's that's physical rest.
• 18:34
  Yes. That what exactly do we mean when we say mental rest. Let's go deeper on that. Yeah. So this is where the research has been booming over the last few years and where my research really positioned itself in is what are the experiences that we can engage in to make sure that we are resting mentally? And there's really four key experiences that we found to be important, detaching, relaxing this idea of having control and then experiencing variety.
• 19:08
  And, you know, we can go into each of those a little bit further if you'd like. Yeah. Okay. So the first action is detachment. Yes. Okay. Talk about that. Detachment means what? Completely removing yourself from anything work or sport related. Not thinking about it, not seeing it. And this is something that's probably one of the hardest to do, because, I mean, if you think about our phones.
• 19:35
  Right. I mean, I know have my work email on my phone, I have my work group chats on my phone, and just because I'm not at work doesn't mean I'm not thinking about those things. I'm not still checking those things. So detaching is this idea of setting aside time to force yourself to detach, to force yourself not to think about work or the demands associated with work.
• 20:02
  Yeah. And gosh, we could go. This is a whole nother episode. Yeah. I think when you just, one example of trying to create some margin in space from your phone. Absolutely. Because the data on that is fascinating and yet sad at the same time. Yeah. So people will have like literal kind of withdrawal symptoms.
• 20:21
  If you separate them from their. Well yeah. Which you know we've said this before on the growth project, the, the engineers of the, these not just the phones but the technology on the phones and the apps, they are not foolish. No. These things have been engineered in a very specific way to create that. Yeah. But as you're saying, Gabby, detaching from something is is fundamental these days as a cell phone.
• 20:47
  Yeah. It's critical. Yeah. And, you know, one thing that has been a big part of my work is with my athletes. It's, you know, maybe they'll say, okay, well, I do detach. I, you know, get off of, you know, looking at my sport group chats and I just go on TikTok and I scroll, I ask them, okay, what does your feed look like?
• 21:09
  And I'm like a tennis player, for example. He's like, well, my feed is, you know, pro athletes and seeing recaps of of games. I'm like, you're not detaching, even though it's not you playing your sport, you're still seeing your sport. So it's, it's harder than we think to, to actually engage in these experiences. But that's why it's, I think so important to know what they are and learn how to, to implement them in your routines.
• 21:40
  Yeah. And let's let me go. I'm going to get on a little bit of, angle on this. Yep. It was specifically with the phone. Because having worked for many years now with a lot of folks who as professionals, this is hard. Yeah. And there's different types of harm because there's I want to be respectful of there are those industries.
• 21:59
  There's plenty of them where, you function in some type of like acute health, acute medical type way. Yeah. Where you really got to have that phone around. We understand that. We still always want to push and challenge those people to, find creative ways to even get small breaks, which I think would probably align with your research.
• 22:21
  It does. It's like, hey, like, I know I'm needed at any given time, but I'm going to at least get an hour right here. And someone else on my team is going to have to cover for me if I can in some way that we've set up with everyone to run same page. Yeah that applies to the minority of people.
• 22:38
  And so like that is the that is in fact the case. So like let me I'm now speaking to most of the people I want to share my experience. So one of the coolest things I've done, with both of my daughters is had an opportunity over the summer, and this was a couple of years ago now, two different times with them, to go on a father daughter.
• 22:56
  It's it's it's a it's called the age range. California. Some people listening if you, they're familiar with it, but it's basically a father daughter week, out in the woods in rural California to do some really amazing stuff. But, one of the things that happens while you're there is, you you don't give them your phone, but it's understood.
• 23:15
  You're just, like, not on your phone. Right? So what that would typically look like is, I would just leave my phone in the cabin that we were in and leave for the day and, like, not come back into the US. Yeah. So you're going to you don't have a phone. And even if you did, you're in a whole place.
• 23:29
  California. No signals. Right. But anyways, here's one of the more interesting things that happened both times I was there is you do that for a week and then at the end of the week, of course, I'm the one that, like, everybody feels like really great content, a bunch of mental rest from it. Here's the thing that happens is both years I was there this it was it was like verbatim on the last day when we were talking about just kind of like some of the reflections on the weekend, you know, at least one person in the, all the group of fathers that were there talked about how and it was like it took
• 24:01
  a lot of humility, for expert to say this, but he was basically like, look, when this week started, I didn't think there was any way I could be without my phone for the whole week because I didn't think, like what? Depending on what his business was like back at the ranch, I didn't think they could do it without me.
• 24:21
  In other words, like, if I'm being honest, I thought that it was kind of of a place of importance that was just paramount yet. And guess what? It all went fine without me. Yeah. And I'm not that critical to the operation and I'm not that truly like important. Yeah. What's being said. And so there's a lot we can unpack with that.
• 24:43
  Absolutely. But one of them is I think it's just like take some chances. Yeah. In this category of like creating detachment from your phone, I think most of the time you're going to find out that it was okay. Yeah. That like nothing burned down in your absence when you were getting the time. Right. Absolutely. And I think start small.
• 25:05
  Right. Even if you don't know. And yeah, you don't have to be a whole week. It can be the hour before you go to bed. I don't look at your phone. I mean, there's so much research on that alone. Is the blue light and how that affects your sleep. So I mean, start small. And then just one last comment on that, Gary.
• 25:22
  Yeah. One of the start small ways that I've seen you really affect for some people is if you could just get to the point where the first 20 minutes of your day, you're awake, you have not looked at your phone. Yeah, yeah. How that calibrates your day a certain way versus if you do look at that phone within the first 20 minutes, how that gets you kind of churning.
• 25:44
  Yeah, yeah. And I say practice what you preach, but I'm guilty of it too. You know, I wake up my alarms on my phone, I hit the snooze button. What's the first thing I do? I look and see what my notifications are that I missed while I was sleeping. Yeah, yeah. Dollar general, I also have one of those two you work on there.
• 26:03
  Yeah. Yep. We got you to detachment. Yeah. Let's talk about Gabby. Relaxation. Yes. So I mean relaxation. I think we're all at this point probably familiar with the idea of relaxing. It's doing something that you enjoy, something calming. Any activity that you find to be just, you know, enjoyable. And it's something that brings you peace at the end of the day.
• 26:31
  And, it could be meditating. It could be listening to music. It could be going for a walk outside. You know, I it varies for everyone, what that activity is. But finding some time to do something that you enjoy. And this is why it's so important, because we get caught up in the busyness of life, and you may get in two weeks down the road and say, oh my gosh, I haven't done anything besides work, you know, go home, make dinner and go to bed.
• 27:06
  I haven't done anything to enjoy myself or to feel like I'm relaxing, you know? And I want to be sure that that's also not a misnomer there, because relaxation doesn't have to mean inactivity, right? Yeah. You might love playing pickleball. Absolutely. Going for a walk. You like if those things are enjoyable to you, that is relaxation. Is that correct?
• 27:26
  Correct. Absolutely. And this that idea of active rest, it's you know, for me relaxation is going to the gym. Yeah. And you know I that is my, my me time my, my time to just let go of the stress of the day and relax, even though I'm putting physical demands on my body, going back to the types of demands I'm putting physical demands on my body, but I am engaging in relaxation to help me with the emotional demands and the cognitive demands of my day.
• 27:57
  So, okay, so that's relaxation. Let's talk about control. Yeah I'm happy just you don't have as much control. Yeah. So how should we think about what control means. So control in this sense is feeling like you have any degree of decision over your day to day. From deciding what you're going to eat that day or deciding, what time you're going to have meetings at or, with my athletes, it was their practice schedule times and their school schedule time.
• 28:35
  So they're things you don't have control over. So then let's say, you know, maybe you have five minutes in between, you know, class A and class B, and you're like, what do I want to do in this time? And choosing to take control of that five minutes? Maybe it's watching a YouTube video, maybe it's calling your friend and talking to them.
• 28:56
  But those little moments where you can regain a sense of control throughout your day, and some days you might have very little of that, very little most of the time. Yeah. Oftentimes you're doing yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom back to back after the next watch. Because that's true for many people. I would think that that means you want to be really thoughtful about kind of a pre and post.
• 29:20
  Yeah. Like what are you doing before your day has really started and kind of like a professional sense or whatever it might be. And then what are you doing afterwards? Absolutely. I'm a big proponent of morning routines and night routines. And I've mentioned it, I think previously last week is I'm very Type-A. I like my morning routines, and I like my nighttime routines before bed.
• 29:42
  And I have to do some, you know, reflection on why those are meaningful to me. Why am I not willing to really sacrifice that time or, you know, budge much when it comes to those, you know, five, ten minutes? And it's because it really does help me just feel that sense of control and makes me feel like, okay, I'm good, I'm ready to go for the day or I'm I'm able to relax before bed now because I've done those things.
• 30:08
  And you can see, like me, make a point here. You can see this application pretty clearly. It's interesting. What did we say earlier while talking about demand is cognitive demand is essentially like your brain firing. Well how does routine help create rest? Routine is when your brain is more absolutely than able to, you know it's done it so many times it's pattern recognition.
• 30:31
  It's less cognitively demanding. So there's the counterbalance right. I'm like oh my brain is able to I'm able to execute these series of behaviors because they're routine oriented for me. And I'm not having to allocate a bunch of cognitive resources to it to accomplish it. Exactly. Yeah. Minimizing cognitive load. Right okay. And then lastly so this is where it gets interesting.
• 30:51
  So variety. So we just talked about the the benefit of routine. Yeah how it relates to kind of control but also variety. So help us understand that. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean you know you do you take the same drive to work every single day. Well considering how you answer is yes okay. But here's where I do get variety.
• 31:12
  I don't come here every day. So right. So there you go. Some days I'm working with a client or on a project other place. It's like it's rare for me to be here five days a week. Exactly. So you're hitting on the two pieces living mutually together. Right. It's you're getting variety. You're getting to go to different places and be around different people, but you still have some things that stay the same and that you have control over.
• 31:38
  So they blend really nicely when you find that pairing. It's variety is so important because we get stuck in this kind of monotony. Right. And, you know, I do the same thing every day. I wake up, I have the same breakfast, I drive the same route to work, I come to work, I have my, you know, morning meeting.
• 31:57
  I have, you know, emails. I reply to that. I have my lunch break. I eat the same thing for lunch every day. I drive the same way home and it just becomes this, you know, very, you know. Yeah, yeah. Highly programed to where you're not really living, I don't think. And you're not enjoying it. And variety can be implemented in so many ways.
• 32:23
  It's eating different things, talking to different people. Something as simple as driving a different route to work. On your lunch break, going for a little walk outside, getting out of the room that you're in and going somewhere else.
• 32:37
  Fuck yeah. Breaks it up. Yeah. And yeah. You see, I mean, here's an easy example is I think that, you know, even just what we saw, throughout Covid a little bit, when everybody was forced to go home, at first it was like, oh, this is awesome.
• 32:53
  Yeah, for a lot of people. Yeah. Because we never did that because we're a smaller company right now. It's all the time. But for for these mega companies who people were the only world they knew was like making my commute and showing up at whatever Google or whatever it is. Our thing you I've got my area and then like, oh, all of a sudden.
• 33:12
  And I don't do any of those, oh, this is kind of cool. Yeah. And then, you know, I think everybody categorically has had a pretty massive return to work. And there still are some derivatives. Now I'm like, oh yeah. Well I here and there, I work from home and that type of thing. So there's a variety that that people are able to enjoy.
• 33:29
  Absolutely. And you know, it's I like what you're talking on is that it can be implemented in a variety of ways. Variety can, and it's we think, you know, one thing is the best approach. And then when it shifts, we're really happy about it. And then we start to get into that monotony again. So anything that you do day in and day out, you're going to get that to that point of it just kind of being too routine.
• 33:58
  So finding little ways to sprinkle in, you know, differences throughout your day, is really important for mental rest and recovery.
• 34:07
  All right. So there's there's our good framework understanding of when we say mental rest. We've now clarified that for our listeners. So okay Gabby, I know we need to kind of move toward the finish line today for us. Yeah. One of our discussion on mental rest. And just for our listeners, just to kind of preview of what's coming, episode two, which we will be discussing next time, is going to be focused on, really drilling down on why all of this matters.
• 34:33
  So we're going to talk about what are the implications if I'm not engaging in enough mental rest, if I'm not focusing on my well-being, like, where does that go? And what does the research tell us about the things we should be concerned about? And then given all of that, once we really kind of heightened our awareness of like, oh, okay, wow, this is where this thing heads, then we'll be very focused on application of here's how you going to do it.
• 34:56
  Yeah, yeah.
• 34:58
  Fantastic. Okay. So as we wrap up, any final thoughts from you or any suggestions to our listeners of where they can kind of begin to at least and possibly, based upon our discussion here? Yeah, yeah, I think the biggest thing is to start really thinking about these four experiences. And if you are integrating them, how and if you're not, how might you?
• 35:19
  So how might you start detaching? How might you start relaxing or taking some control back in your day to day and and getting some variety in.
• 35:28
  Yeah, exactly. And I think they're, they're connected in the sense of if you're not beginning with the first one you said. If you're not engaging in some attempt to kind of detach.
• 35:38
  Yep. Probably going to be hard. Do these others. Absolutely. I think you're going to have a really hard time if you're not able to kind of pull back a little bit from, yeah, all of these demands that are on you. Okay. Well, awesome as always. Very thankful to our listeners who make the Growth Project what it is.
• 35:54
  We always value your feedback. Click over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you, are enjoying the growth project, leave us a review, let us know how we can improve and continue to deliver, high quality content to you. We look forward to our next conversation here real soon. Thanks so much. Yep. Thank you.