How to strengthen your stress response (w/ Master Fixer Kelly McGonigal)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Fixable - "How to strengthen your stress response (w/ Master Fixer Kelly McGonigal)"

Hosts: Anne Morriss & Frances Frei
Guest: Dr. Kelly McGonigal, Health Psychologist, Stanford University
Date: May 4, 2026
Theme: Exploring the realities of stress, debunking myths, and unlocking how a healthy stress response and moments of joy can transform your life and work.

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Episode Overview

This episode of Fixable tackles the ever-relevant topic of stress in the workplace—and in life. Anne and Frances invite Stanford health psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Kelly McGonigal to challenge the commonly held belief that stress is inherently bad, and to share research-backed strategies for making stress work for you. The conversation covers types of stress responses, how to thrive in the face of extended difficulty, leadership techniques for healthier teams, and how meaning and joy are crucial to resilience and success.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Debunking the 'Stress is Bad' Myth

[05:28]

• Stress is not simply negative; it’s deeply tied to our ability to cope with life’s challenges.
• People who thrive under stress draw on diverse coping strengths: action over avoidance, collaboration, adaptability, and meaning-making.
• Dr. Kelly McGonigal:
  "People who are thriving well in stress are ones that can use a lot of different coping strengths... It's almost like choosing to play a role in how a situation changes you. So good stress, bad stress, not thinking of it that way, but given that this is reality, what is this an opportunity to practice?" [06:26]

Recognizing Stress Instincts & the Variety of Responses

[07:48]

• Honor and listen to your inner resources, but don’t follow every instinct blindly.
• Everyone’s default stress response—fight, flight, or even sleep—isn't always helpful.
• Anne: "My machinery... is not super reliable in distinguishing biological threat event from not a biological threat event." [08:12]
• Frances: "When there's stress, I just go to sleep... I'll sleep standing up, I'll sleep laying down. I'm just gone, huh? And when I wake up, I'm ready." [09:29]

Managing Team Dynamics under Stress

[12:34]

• Individual coping habits show up at the team level; leaders may default to "I alone can fix this"—which can breed burnout and dysfunction.
• Stress mindsets are contagious. Teams benefit when a member—especially the leader—embraces a "challenge" mindset and a "bigger than self" mindset.
• Dr. McGonigal:
  "You really need a leader whose mindset is that everything is workable and there are many ways to cope with problems... When someone on a team has a challenge mindset... everyone else who is around them is then more likely to also start to have that perspective." [13:34]
• Allow team members to metabolize stress and emotions at their own pace. Trying to suppress or "fix" emotions can be counterproductive.
• Dr. McGonigal: "You need to allow other people to have reactions that maybe you think are less than ideal... Not every difficult emotion is dysfunctional. And emotions sometimes work better when they're expressed than when they are held privately." [17:39]
• Anne on layoffs: "People delivering the news have metabolized [it], and then people will get frustrated that their colleagues aren't moving through these emotions faster." [18:47]

Coping with Extended/Existential Stress (eg. COVID-19)

[20:22]

• Meaning-centered coping overwhelmingly predicts resilience and well-being across conditions and populations.
• Dr. McGonigal:
  "The meaning-centered coping just blew everything out of the water. Nothing really helped except meaning-centered coping... these are the things that people do as forms of existential courage." [21:33]

The Nine Strategies of Meaning-Centered Coping ([21:53])

1. Do something productive every day.
2. Do what is most important in your life.
3. Use the situation to get closer to loved ones.
4. Help others during this time.
5. Find personal meaning in the current situation.
6. Be grateful for your life as it is.
7. Hope for the best.
8. Believe you’ll emerge stronger.
9. Have faith something positive will come from this.

• These strategies form what McGonigal calls "existential courage"—actively affirming the value of life and your place in it, even in difficulty.
• Anne: "It feels so portable. I'm not sure it's not like a daily checklist." [24:25]

Joy and Performance—Making the Case for Joy at Work

[27:55]

• Joy is not frivolous; it's essential feedback that life is worthwhile. At work, joy stems largely from feeling acknowledged and doing meaningful, even difficult, things.
• Dr. McGonigal:
  "If you never experience joy at work, something is going wrong... one of the greatest joys can be acting in a way that's aligned with your ethics, fulfilling an obligation... These are things that bring people joy." [28:12]
• Positive micro-events (e.g., small acts of acknowledgment, laughter, shared success) have outsized impact on well-being and team effectiveness.
• Dr. McGonigal: "These moments exist. And then when you start to understand what brings you and others joy, you can be yourself at work in a way that makes work so much better for yourself and others." [36:40]

Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors Example ([32:26])

• Basketball coach Steve Kerr operationalized four core values: joy, mindfulness, compassion, competition.
• He made joy a daily practice, intentionally weaving appreciation, humor, and human connection into team routines—which is radical even for high-performance environments.

Accessible Joy at Work—What Actually Works

[34:40]

• You don't need elaborate celebrations; the biggest infuser of joy is simple acknowledgment.
• Shared laughter and connection create trust and biological synchrony.
• Acts as small as recognizing someone's contribution, laughing together, or a moment of genuine connection can change the work experience and build resilience.
• Dr. McGonigal: "Joy at work, appreciating people, finding moments where you're able to laugh with others, taking a moment to feel close to another human being is another great source of meaning and joy at work that can happen whatever the function of your job is or whatever the context of your role is." [35:44]
• Beware of "pseudo-inefficacy": the belief that if you can't fix everything, your efforts don't matter. Small moments and actions do count and build true resilience and hope.

Anne’s Reflection: "I'm thinking about jobs that I have hated. And every one of these approaches would have helped, even if I was just getting through the day..." [37:29]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Choosing to play a role in how a situation changes you... [is] a basic coping strategy." — Dr. Kelly McGonigal [06:26]
• "My machinery is not super reliable in distinguishing biological threat from not a biological threat." — Anne Morriss [08:12]
• "When there's stress, I just go to sleep. The deepest sleep I ever have." — Frances Frei [09:29]
• "Allowing other people to have reactions that maybe you think are less than ideal... is an amazing resource." — Dr. Kelly McGonigal [16:09]
• "Meaning-centered coping just blew everything out of the water... existential courage." — Dr. Kelly McGonigal [21:33]
• "If you never experience joy at work, something is going wrong..." — Dr. Kelly McGonigal [28:12]
• "Joy is a risk worth taking at work." — Anne Morriss (episode theme)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro and Framing the Problem of Stress: [01:37] – [03:05]
• Kelly McGonigal’s Origin Story + Stress Strengths: [05:28] – [07:30]
• Different Stress Responses (fight, flight, sleep): [08:12] – [10:20]
• Team Stress Dynamics & Leadership: [12:34] – [15:51]
• Allowing Emotional Reactions on Teams: [16:09] – [18:47]
• Meaning-Centered Coping, COVID & Existential Stress: [20:22] – [26:16]
• Joy, Performance, and Steve Kerr’s Coaching Approach: [27:55] – [34:27]
• Joy as a Risk Worth Taking at Work, Practical Advice: [34:40] – [37:29]
• Challenging Pseudo-inefficacy & Final Reflections on Joy: [37:41] – [39:53]

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Summary Takeaways

• Stress is not just inevitable—it’s a powerful resource when harnessed with meaning and support.
• Recognize and honor the diversity of stress responses in yourself and teams without judgment.
• Meaning-centered coping—affirming purpose and value, acting with agency, helping others—is the most research-backed way to buffer life’s biggest challenges.
• Infuse joy into any workplace by acknowledging others, seeking micro-moments of connection, and combating the myth that only “big fixes” matter.
• Joy is not just compatible with high performance; it’s essential for resilience, trust, and long-term success.

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To hear even more on stress, joy, and actionable workplace fixes, tune in next week for part two with Dr. McGonigal answering listener questions.

Transcript

[Anne Morris]

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[Anne Morris]

This episode is brought to you by Apple Card Apple card users get 2% daily cash back on purchases made in store and online, whether it's for big ticket items or everyday purchases. When they use their Apple Card with Apple Pay now, that's a benefit that's just too too good to pass up. You could be earning 2% daily cash back when you use your Apple Card with Apple Pay to buy turmeric for your signature curry, 2% back on flights to visit the family in Tucson, and even 2% back on your kid's new tuba. You might even be able to get 2% back on a tuba tutor, not an Apple Card customer. You can apply in the Wallet app on iPhone, subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs bank usa, Salt Lake City Branch Terms and more at Apple Co Benefits welcome to Fixable. This is a show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they're not. I'm Anne Morris.

[Frances Frey]

And I'm Frances Frey. Anne and I have spent decades teaching and coaching people on how to show up as the leaders they want to be at work.

[Anne Morris]

The thing we keep coming back to is this. You can't separate how you lead from how you're wired. We all react to stress differently, and stress isn't an optional experience. Not in life, and especially not at work. And there are different kinds of stress. There's stress that gets resolved relatively quickly, and then there's stress that makes the world feel fundamentally less stable than it used to. That's why we want to focus on stress today and next week, too, because there's so much ground to cover here.

[Frances Frey]

I think we'd learned so much about stress during the pandemic we did, for

[Anne Morris]

sure, as a family, as did most people. I do think Covid era stress had a big impact on the way we all continue to live and work.

[Frances Frey]

It also gave us some really Useful data on how human beings cope with big existential stress.

[Anne Morris]

Absolutely. In this conversation, we're going to challenge a big myth about stress, that it's simply bad for you. And we'll identify different stress responses in ourselves. Fight, flight, and as I have learned in our marriage, you can also just go to sleep.

[Frances Frey]

I am not going to confirm nor deny anything.

[Anne Morris]

Problem solved. Finally, we're going to make the case for joy. Joy not only brings us to life, but it has all of these other wonderful effects on our experience of work.

[Frances Frey]

Oh, I sure hope we get to bring an expert in for this.

[Anne Morris]

We absolutely do. The wonderful Dr. Kelly McGonigal is going to help us better understand ourselves as embodied three dimensional leaders and colleagues. Both the upside and downside of having to go to work in these meat suits we're all walking around in. Kelly is a health psychologist and beloved lecturer at Stanford University. She's one of those researchers who can take a finding from a neuroscience lab and make you want to change your life because of it.

[Frances Frey]

She's an educator to her core.

[Anne Morris]

Definitely. She is the author of several great books, including the Joy of Movement and the forthcoming Joy is a risk worth taking, which will be out this fall. Her other bestselling books have explored the science of willpower and the non intuitive advantages of stress. Her TED talk, how to make stress your friend has been watched over 24 million times.

[Frances Frey]

For context, that's roughly everyone in Australia,

[Anne Morris]

plus a few Canadians thrown in.

[Frances Frey]

Dr. McGonigal to the rescue.

[Anne Morris]

Precisely. Dr. Kelly McGonigal, welcome to Fixable.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[Anne Morris]

We said a lot of nice things about you before you joined. And I don't think we've ever liked someone so much who we've never met before. Wow.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

I hope I live up to it.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

Just to set the stakes of this, whatever you say next, but is it true that you and your husband got married in an animal shelter?

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Animal sanctuary. Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah. So it's in the desert. It was outdoors. Yes. And our honeymoon was volunteering and the person who married us adopted a Chihuahua with a heart defect.

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[Anne Morris]

It was a heart defect.

[Frances Frey]

A Chihuahua with art defect.

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[Frances Frey]

I mean, I didn't even know any of those things were possibilities. Kelly, you have opened doors, windows, everything.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

For me, we delayed getting married for a while because I couldn't think of a version that really felt like us. And that would be easy. You know, I got married in a tank top and jeans. It was the right thing. And we got all of our gifts were donations to the animal sanctuary.

[Frances Frey]

So once you say it, I can't believe that they're not booked every weekend.

[Anne Morris]

All right, we're going to get into your expertise. So let's start with stress. Because so many people know you from this topic. One of your jumping off points is to challenge this prevailing storyline that stress is bad. But when you sample on the people who are managing high levels of stress skillfully, what is different about their mindsets and behaviors?

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

This is really about finding a pragmatic way to engage with life as it is and to cope in ways that give you access to our natural capacity to deal with things like challenges and threats and change and uncertainty and conflict and opportunities, all the things that we have a stress response system for. And so people who are thriving well in stress are ones that can use a lot of different coping strengths. There are people who are good at taking action rather than procrastinating or avoiding. There are people who are really good at engaging in social coping, collaboration, cooperation, willing to ask for help and also taking personal meaning and being able to help others, Being sort of not alone in a stressful situation. There are people who are really good at being flexible and adapting as situations adapt and being. You know, I always say it's sort of like they're willing to accept reality as it unfolds. They also are really good at making meaning out of situations whether or not the situations are good. So it's almost like choosing to play a role in how a situation changes you. So good stress, bad stress, not thinking of it that way. Like I wanted this to happen or I didn't want it to happen. But given that this is reality, what is this an opportunity to practice? What version of myself am I going to bring to the situation or what can I learn from it that will be useful in the future? I think of those as some of our basic coping strategies or strengths. And they're all built into the biology of a stress response.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

And is part of your coaching for us, for people listening for us here. But it's listen more is to honor those signals. Listen to them. Like trust that you have what you need to manage the situation.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah. Well, to trust your inner resources and also to be willing to rely on and expand your outer resources. I think, you know, when it talks about trusting a signal, we also all have stress strengths and habits. So I don't necessarily mean trust and immediately give in to every stress instinct you have. You know, coming back to that idea

[Anne Morris]

that my machinery, I will confess, is not super reliable in distinguishing biological Threat event from. Not a biological threat event.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Right. So maybe your instinct is to have a threat response, which often feels like, you know, your heart is pounding, you feel tension, you want to. You want to, like, immediately fix a problem rather than reflect on it. Or maybe you want to escape a situation so you don't have to deal with it. Or it's just. It's harder to be more flexible or to be a more social version of yourself. And we get into this feeling like we're fighting every moment, and that is often not physiologically healthy for us in the long term when we're always in that state. So you might have that fight or flight. My worst instinct is freeze or withdrawal or dissociate. Like, my best trained instinct is when things are stressful, I want to dissociate, disappear, or I want to go to bed, or I want to ignore, like, close contact with other people. It's like a. Like a protection kind of mechanism.

[Anne Morris]

And what Frances is trying to say, non verbally, is she also goes to sleep in very stressful situations.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Wait, can you actually go to sleep? Because I'm not that.

[Frances Frey]

I sleep like a stone when there is stress. The fight or flight, I've always been like, no, no, no. It's play dead. When there's stress, I just go to sleep. And I think it's the deepest sleep I ever have. Ann and I had our first fight, and she was ready to go, and

[Anne Morris]

I was like, I have to. I'm packing the car. I'm, like, looking at the escape routes because I am 100% flight. And meanwhile, like, my partner in crime is. Is asleep. This was our first real marital fight.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

I don't need to be here for this.

[Frances Frey]

I have to go to sleep right now. And, like, literally, there is no fighting it. And I'm just. I'll sleep standing up. I'll sleep laying down. I'm just gone, huh? And when I wake up, I'm ready.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

I mean, I don't know how functional or dysfunctional that is partly to say for our whole audience is. I'm not a clinical psychologist, so I don't analyze people. I've only been trained to analyze data. So I don't know for sure what's going on.

[Anne Morris]

Let's agree, Dr. McGonagall, that it's probably dysfunctional. Just maybe for the sake of this conversation,

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

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[Anne Morris]

So I'm curious when you see this play out on teams because we think about this unit of team a lot. So you have people bringing their like threat assessment machinery which is not particularly functional.

[Frances Frey]

Right.

[Anne Morris]

And then threat response, also not particularly functional. But we're all bring, we're all bringing these. I mean the habits and instincts. How if I'm responsible for that team, do I make this all work?

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah. So one thing I want to mention too is because it can seem like a good one, but also can get us into trouble on teams is the Superman Superwoman superhuman mindset of I alone can handle this situation. I alone will fix the problem. I alone need access to the information about what's actually happening. And that can be, it can be like a stress strength in the sense that it really helps you get things done, but ultimately a habit that if that's the only way you cope, it doesn't allow you to actually maximize the team or the full resources available to you and can lead to burnout. So there's some interesting research on stress mindsets and stress coping in teams. I think one thing you really need is a leader who has a mindset that everything is workable and there are many ways to cope with problems and is the least likely to go into that. Like their own worst versions of a stress response. We know that when one person on a team actually doesn't need to be the leader, but someone who has some maybe influence is particularly contagious. That when someone on a team, for example, has a challenge mindset, not only is their own physiological stress response, it's more regulated. It's more aligned with the type of response you want your body to have. When you're problem solving or you're cooperating. But not necessarily like fleeing a building or fighting someone, they have that healthier stress response. They have a mindset that is better equipped to face the problem head on, consider options and. And collaborate. But then also everyone else who is around them is then more likely to also start to have that perspective that this is workable, that we may feel overwhelmed, but we have the capacity to deal with this. Other people's stress responses become more regulated in that way physiologically and outcomes are often better. So I think that since I know you often are talking to people who are in a position of leadership or influence, is that before you start to think about telling other people how to manage their stress is to start to find a version of yourself. That is the mindset is spacious enough to allow everything that might be happening and that you yourself are grounded in something more like a challenge mindset. And also the bigger than self mindset. Sometimes I think in the scientific literature, they're really pulled apart. Like a challenge response is I'm going to do it. And a bigger than self stress response or a social stress response is like, we are gonna do this because we need one another. But I actually think like, they actually, they go together really well often.

[Anne Morris]

I think it's a beautiful point.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

When we see the most skillful stress responses out in the wild, we do see a combination of those two also as a way to just access the resources, you know, that it's worth it for us to get through this stressful period because we are working towards something bigger than ourselves.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

I want to say one other thing about leadership or influence, and this is true both in the workplace and also in family relationships or other contexts. One thing I find myself talking about all the time with both stress and empathy and compassion is that you need to allow other people to have reactions that maybe you think are less than ideal. That it can't be your job to manage other people's emotions or coping in that, like, micromanagement way. You really have to be okay with some things unfolding in natural time. Like, it's okay for people to be anxious. It's okay for people to be frustrated. It's okay for people to be angry. It's okay for people to be scared. These things are allowable experiences that are not necessarily going to sabotage whatever you need to do together. And I think to not have your own immediate stress response to other people's difficult emotions or reactions is an amazing resource. Literally, just don't be surprised by it and don't immediately try to shut it down or fix it.

[Frances Frey]

And is one of the reasons for that. Because the person is gonna maybe be there just as a temporary waystation. Like, they're metabolizing where they are. We don't have to pour liquid cement on where they are.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah. And also that, you know, some of these things are functional. Not every difficult emotion is dysfunctional. And emotions sometimes work better when they're expressed than when they are held privately. Which you teach people if it's not okay to be frustrated or it's not okay to be anxious, or it's not ever okay to be angry. If you teach people that these emotions have to stay inside. They don't function as well inside. And they're more likely to become physiologically unhealthy as well. So part of it is that, like, they just. Truly, it is okay that people are having these. And then also it allows you to be more skillful in how you respond than if people are holding some of their responses internally or you don't know what people's instincts are in terms of, like, the fight or the flee or the. The denial or whatever it is, or the I alone will do it. It's like, actually good to have access to all this information. And so you can't be so allergic to seeing somebody else's frustration or anxiety that you make that the project that has to be fixed instead of the situation.

[Anne Morris]

We see this a lot around layoffs. Just giving people the space to be sad and to grieve. And often the people delivering the news have metabolized because they've been thinking about it for months. And then people will get frustrated that their colleagues aren't moving through these emotions faster. So I think really resonates what you're saying. Getting to know you in these few minutes and what we know about your work and training. I'm curious how you experienced Covid and the long tail of COVID which we feel like is still operating in the world and in the workplace. And I will give you a little context here. So I directionally identify as someone who manages stress well, even likes high stress to kind of keep my attention. And Covid tipped me over. Getting sick, trying to keep my family safe. The. The financial stress of that moment, the isolation, like, none of my useful tools worked. And I'm wondering what you have learned about what works in these big stress moments. So it's not like, oh, the client is mad, which I'm great at the client is mad moment, but like, losing a loved one or a real financial crisis, or this thing that the world all experienced, which it felt like everything that was holding us up was no longer sturdy.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah. There's phenomenal research on this. I love that you asked this, but I'll just say personally for me, too, before I say what the research shows. For Covid. For me, the thing that ended up being the hardest was the social isolation. You know, one of the things that I do that is not related to psychology is I teach dance classes twice a day at a community center and at Stanford.

[Anne Morris]

Did you say twice a day?

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah, most days. Yeah. And back then, I think it was maybe teaching a little more than that. It just affirmed for me the value of this thing that to the outside world might not be seen as the most important thing. I do, but. So as soon as I was able to start teaching again, I did. But now I know that it's okay to prioritize that instead of things that might appear to be more important or valuable. But let me talk about this research looking at what type of coping helped protect physical well being, mental well being, social well being, hope, everything that matters, the good stuff. So, spoiler, it was the meaning centered coping that just blew everything out of the water. Like, nothing really helped except meaning centered coping.

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

And meaning centered coping helped everywhere, all over the world, however old you are, whatever gender you are, whatever you're dealing with. And it helped the most for people who were dealing with things like job loss or health challenges or social isolation.

[Frances Frey]

What is meaning centered coping? Oh, my gosh, I need to know right now.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Okay, here are the nine strategies, and you're going to hear them and you're going to think, well, they don't all sound like the same thing, but all over the world, these things hung together. So if somebody said they did one of these things, it was highly Likely they were also doing the other eight things. This was, you know, with factor analysis. These things hung together even though they seem like maybe they're pointing at a few different things. And I think it's because, you know, as the researcher said, these are the things that people do as forms of existential courage. That is when you want to affirm that life has value. I know. I love the word existential courage because it acknowledges that sometimes it's hard to be alive or sometimes it's hard to really have faith in the value of life itself or your life, to know that you matter, to have hope for the future. And so these are the strategies that people use to, to, to affirm that life has value, including their individual life, that they matter, that they belong, that good things are possible. Okay, number one, I do something productive every day. Number two, I still do what is most important in my life. Three, I use the situation to get closer to my loved ones. Four, I help others during this time. Five, I have found a personal meaning in the current situation. Six, I am grateful for my life as it is. Seven, I hope for the best. That one is always the hardest for me. Let me say, I see, I hope for the best. I always expect the worst, but I understand what it means. Eight, I will get out of the situation stronger than I was before. And nine, I have faith that something positive will come out of this. So what you really see is people are being agentic. They are thinking about the situation in a way that allows them, like I said earlier, to play an active role in how the situation is going to affect them or change them, that they are going to find a meaning in it. And so I think part of what these strategies are pointing to is this perspective that even a situation you wouldn't choose for yourself is an opportunity to be clear about your values or to make choices that you are proud of or that bring meaning to your life.

[Anne Morris]

It's such a powerful list. It feels so portable. I'm not sure it's not like a daily checklist.

[Frances Frey]

It does feel like a daily checklist.

[Anne Morris]

And meaning centered living, not just coping.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

I agree. And one of the things I would often think about when I'm looking at that list is it's not always obvious how to do that. Like the one I write about in the book is I use the situation to get closer to my loved ones. That one was challenging for me because you can have a yearning for some of these things. And this is also, when we talk about stress as a signal you can listen to sometimes you do feel a yearning for things when life is stressful or difficult. And there's a gap between knowing that something would feel really helpful or comforting or important, but you don't know how to get there. And I think the idea of going outside your comfort zone, taking some risks, telling people that there's something that you want or need, but that, that, that idea of existential courage sometimes, even if you don't know how to do it, like I don't know what I have to offer others. I don't know if people want what I have to offer, but I'm still going to look for a way to help others. Or I don't know, like that's I hope for the best. And for me that's an easier version of I hope for the best than like I expect the best possible outcome for everything in my life that I I mean that may be. I'm not sure that's what I hope for the best means, but I it also, I could be projecting my own personality traits onto that one.

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Let's get in the tour bus and hit the road.

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Are you a groupie on this tour?

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Oh you're definitely a groupie.

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[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

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[Anne Morris]

For the performance oriented listeners to this conversation. Kelly from the research you've seen, make the case that joy can not only coexist with winning and with competition, but it can actually fuel it.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

So joy is the feeling you have in a moment that basically says that life is worth living or this is what life is for. So you feel connected to something that you would assign that label. Like this is what life is for. This is what makes life worth living. I'm glad to be alive now. People experience joy from all sorts of different things. People often think it's going to be only hedonistic or only frivolous, like joy for ice cream. But when you actually look at when people experience joy, some of the biggest sources of joy are being acknowledged or appreciated for something that you did, doing something hard but meaningful, feeling connected to somebody else in any sort of meaningful or positive way. So joy itself I often think of as it's not like something you're trying to chase. Like, joy is good for me because it's going to boost my immune system and therefore the stress I had today will be less toxic. It's actually something you should pay attention to because if you never experience joy at work, something is going wrong. You just, you feel better or you feel relieved because something feels aligned in that moment in a way that really matters to you. And for some people, it's seeing something beautiful in nature. But often it's these small things you do every day that let you know that you matter. You know, one of the greatest joys can be acting in a way that's aligned with your ethics, fulfilling an obligation. These are not the things that people typically talk about as joy, but when you actually track it, these are things that bring people joy. So the argument that I would make is that it's not like you need to go do things that bring you joy because it's a resource. It's that the things you do every day, you should be looking for moments of joy, and then you should be allowing yourself to appreciate them in a way that actually amplifies them. So instead what people often do is dismiss them or dampen them. Like, let's say somebody thanks you for something that you did at work, and in your own head you could be like, well, that's my job. It doesn't really matter. Or it was no big deal, or they're just saying that because they feel obligated to, or they're trying to be nice. There are all these things we can do, or you can even not pay attention to it. Maybe it came in as a message and you don't even respond to it because you're like, I'm not even going to process that. Somebody took time to acknowledge how I contributed or what I did to help them. So the thing that really helps is to slow down and be like, oh, this little moment of uplift, this is something I can appreciate. This feeling of competence that actually that's a form of joy. I feel I did something and I'm proud of what I did. You have to pause and appreciate them in the same way that you would appreciate it if you were eating delicious ice cream or seeing something beautiful in nature that you actually take it in. And what we know is that these. So in the performance literature, these are often called micro events, positive micro events. That sounds so interesting. I sometimes call them micro uplifts, but they're these little moments throughout the day. And when you experience them in relationships, you experience them at work or you experience them in communities, it's not just a little blip where your mood improves for a second. It really changes how you feel about the whole thing. Your ability to see that that that activity or that relationship is meaningful and fulfilling. It increases your ability to recover from setbacks or stressors with more resilience and more flexibility. These are really meaningful moments. And that's how I feel often when I'm teaching dance like that. Right. Fit between who I really am and what's happening.

[Frances Frey]

I want to take my wife on a date weekend to join some of your dance classes.

[Anne Morris]

I love to dance and it's not something that we really do as a couple. So that sounds really fun to do it in a class.

[Frances Frey]

And if there were a place where she could go every day, I think she might.

[Anne Morris]

Mind blowing.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah. This whole conversation reminds me of one of the cases I love to teach and that's on coach Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors.

[Anne Morris]

Oh yeah, totally.

[Frances Frey]

So Steve Kerr, who is the really successful long term coach of the Golden State Warriors.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yes.

[Frances Frey]

My favorite case to teach is on him and at the center of it. And he has had outsized success as a player, outsized success as a coach, which doing both of those things makes him in very rare company, like maybe with two other people in the history of basketball and as a Coach. He attributes a lot of his success to coming in and really thinking about values. And he brought his four values to coaching. And I'll tell you the four values, but you won't find them anywhere else as a collection. You certainly won't find them in sports. It's hard to find them anywhere. One of them, because Anna's bringing it up, is joy, mindfulness, compassion. This is for NBA basketball and then competition. So competition, I think, is the only one that's not surprising. And so then he would operationalize each one of these. So basketball was so serious, like when you were at the pro level, you had to turn off all the music. He's like, what are we doing? No, we have the music playing. He would like. You have to watch a lot of film. He would splice in jokes in the film and pranks and just do all of this intentional stuff to make sure to Ann's daily practice. There was a daily practice of joy, compassion, mindfulness, and competition. So they would have ridiculous competitions. Just because these were, like, competitive, like, we're going to compete. Who can eat the most apple? Like, it was just all these wonderful things about it.

[Anne Morris]

So if we bring this idea in the workplace and we make the case that joy is a risk worth taking at work, I want to say sell it to people who. For whom that word isn't as resonant.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

The easiest thing you can do to bring joy to work is not to have a party or, like, bring in clowns or whatever people think joy, like people who are really skeptical of this, whatever they think it is. You don't have to play donuts, free donuts. Look, that's fine. I'm not saying you can't do that. But if you actually want people to experience joy at work, the number one thing you can do is acknowledge them. See what they do and acknowledge them. That is the number one source of joy at work is feeling like what you do matters and so show appreciation. Another thing that you can do is laugh. Moments of shared laughter are so powerful. There are very few things that synchronize people as quickly in terms of their. Like their heart rhythms and their nervous system activity and their brain activity. When you actually laugh with other people is a form of biological intimacy that builds real trust. And, you know, it's why people often will look for excuses to laugh in situations where they feel vulnerable and need to feel trust. Like in hospitals where, you know, if you're able to laugh with a care provider or your family in that situation, it doesn't just boost your Mood a little bit, but it gives you this physiological sense of trust. So these are, you know, joy at work, appreciating people, finding moments where you're able to laugh with others, taking a moment to feel close to another human being is another great source of meaning. And joy at work that can happen whatever the function of your job is or whatever the context of your role is. There are often these opportunities to feel like just a moment of human connection. They're just so intrinsic to engagement and caring and satisfaction. And again, like I said, it's not about being joyful. You have to look at what you're doing in a way that allows you to see what's good and appreciate it, and that gives rise to joy. And whether that you're seeing the good in others and acknowledging it, or you're seeing the little moments in the day where what you do matters, or you're imagining a positive outcome that you're willing to strive for, or you're looking at the context you're in and finding the things in it that actually are delightful or that bring you peace. You know, whether it's a view out of your window or the coffee that you have with a coworker. But these moments exist. And then when you start to understand what brings you and others joy, you can be yourself at work in a way that makes work so much better for yourself and others. You know, people who experience joy at work, that they are better versions of themselves in every part of that role.

[Anne Morris]

I love this list. And I'm thinking about jobs that I have hated. And every one of these approaches would have helped even if I was just getting through the day. It would have really changed my experience.

[Dr. Kelly McGonigal]

Yeah, and that's a great thing. There's a concept that I learned when I was studying compassion called pseudo inefficacy. And that is the belief that what you do doesn't matter because it doesn't fix everything. So going back, we started talking about animal rescue and adoption. So when I work in animal adoption, if I think the fact that I found homes for 10 cats today, if I think it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, because there are cats today who were euthanized, who couldn't get homes, it just leads to complete and utter collapse of your ability to care, your ability to be motivated, your ability to find meaning, and the fact is, it's wrong. Of course it matters. It matters to those cats. It matters to those humans. So this idea of pseudo in efficacy is, if I can't fix everything, if what I do today isn't fully commensurate to the scale of problems or suffering in my life or in the world. It's worthless. And I feel like people have this mindset towards joy that if, okay, I share a laugh or somebody said something kind to me and I feel better for a moment, who cares? In the grand scheme of things, it's not equal to the pain or the problems or the stress that I face. But the fact is that's actually not how joy works. And when you look at the research, the smallest of moments can sustain hope. The smallest of moments can make life feel meaningful. The smallest of moments can help your body and brain recover from whatever the stress or the challenges are. And so that's another sort of making the case for it. You really have to pay attention. You have to sense this yourself, which means you have to be willing to appreciate the small things when or be willing to take a risk and do something nice for somebody else. Even if you know what they're dealing with. Like, you can't fix it or make it better. That doesn't mean that there's no value in letting them know that you care about them or doing one small gesture showing that you're in it with them and that they're not alone. And this is, you know, this is true for work and it's true for other relationships.

[Anne Morris]

We'll be back next week with more Kelly because we can't get enough of her incredible insight on stress and joy. She's going to answer questions about stress and joy at work from you, our incredible listeners. And until then, that's our show.

[Frances Frey]

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Your participation helps us make great episodes, so if you want to help, please follow the show. Share an episode with a friend, leave a review. All of those are free and they totally help support us. If you want to figure out any questions about your workplace problem together, email [e-mail].

[Anne Morris]

Fixable is a podcast from ted. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris and me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Rahima Nassa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloraiso and Roxanne Hylash.

[Frances Frey]

And our show was mixed by Louis at Storyyard.

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