S1:E12 – Navigating Leadership Anxiety

In this episode, Bridgette and Irvine explore the nature of leadership anxiety. All leaders have some anxiety, whether they know it consciously or not. The problem isn’t the anxiety itself, but what we do with it that counts.  Tune in to learn more about where leadership anxiety originates, how it impacts your behavior on the job and what you can do to better manage its impact on you and others.

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SHOW NOTES

Don’t forget to check out my You Tube channel with new videos every Wednesday on emotional intelligence, resilience, and leadership.

Check out Irvine’s new book Leadership Lessons From The Pub.

Check out Bridgette’s book which she co-authored with Bod Duggan  Resilient Leadership 2.0.

And as always, don’t forget about all the mind-blowing free resources some of which are mentioned in each episode. 

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READ THE TRANSCRIPTION

Bridgette: Welcome everybody to the Resilient Leadership podcast. My name is Bridgette and as always, I am joined today by the wonderful Irvine Nugent. Irvine, how are you doing?

Irvine: Bridgette I am doing fantastic. A little more rested in this episode as we speak. I just got back from an amazing 12-day tour of Ireland with 16 amazing people, and we had a lot of fun and a little bit of interesting ending to it, which we might explore a little bit later in this episode, but overall I’m feeling really refreshed. How about you?

Bridgette: I love that. I’ve been doing some traveling too, and some of it was refreshing and some of it wasn’t, but today I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation. We’re going to be talking about navigating leadership anxiety and what is it, and where does it come from? Why is it that all leaders have some anxiety whether they’re consciously aware of it or not? So, to our listeners, you might be thinking, well, I don’t really have any anxiety. But deeper looks, suggest that’s not the case. And what is the impact of a leader’s anxiety on them, on other folks? And then how can they manage it? So we’re going get into all of that, but I think what we want to say at the onset, and Irvine, I’m curious if you agree with this is that anxiety is sort of part and parcel of leadership. It sort of comes with the territory. Do you agree?

Irvine: I so agree. There never was a moment when leadership was easy, but certainly now, thinking back in the last five years, the curve balls as well, that comes with that. And so managing all of that, it is normal and expected that anxiety is part of the job description. And it strikes me, Bridgette, as well, we’ve talked a lot about anxiety, in the earlier episodes, but maybe it’s a good chance for us to kind of revisit, everyone has their own thoughts about one anxiety are, but what exactly is anxiety?

Bridgette: Yeah. So it’s important that we define it because I think it gets mixed up with stress in other related terms, and what we’re really talking about when we say anxiety, whether it’s leadership, anxiety or general anxiety is it’s a state of unease, it’s a mental, and emotional, and physiological state of unease in the face of real or imagined threats. And that imagined piece is going be at a really important part that we’re going come back to. We are sophisticated threat detection systems, but sometimes we get it wrong. And so anxiety is neither good nor bad. It’s an evolutionary force of nature. It helps keep us alive because there are real threats in the world and the last two years have certainly shoved that right up in our faces, that leaders need to attend to. So anxiety is not the problem in and of itself per se, it’s kind of what we do with it that matters. But, Irvine, you’ve talked from time to time on these episodes about your own leadership journey. So I’m curious about, as you reflect on that, what were your sources of anxiety as a leader? Do you remember feeling anxious?

Irvine: Oh yeah. Oh boy. I have a Ph.D. in anxiety over some of my leadership experiences. I think a pattern I noticed is towards the beginning of the leadership role. So in every leadership role, I took on, there was abiding anxiety within me about wanting to succeed, it was this internal pressure. And that a little bit of the feeling of the weight of the world depended on me even though I know intellectually that leadership is about teams and everyone pulling together and I’m a pretty much a team person, but I just felt that internal pressure to succeed. And then other situations, Bridgette, I went through leadership in economic downturns and some tough decisions had to be made, some programs were closed for all the right reasons, and yet within me was this, this jewel dose of anxiety.

One was this feeling, first of all, I’m a little bit of a people pleaser, so I wondered, this is going impact what people, how will people react when I do this? Would I have to fire people, and let people go? And then the second anxiety is I was all these machinations of how are people going to react and trying to imagine kind of the different reactions that I would experience and how would I deal with that. And then I think the third area was trying to lead in times where there just wasn’t clarity and feeling that I needed to have answers and not able to really come up with any great answers, and just feeling stuck and been anxious about that and feeling that I should have answers when really I didn’t or there just wasn’t any good answers.

 Bridgette: Gosh, I am certain that our listeners can relate to all of the examples, but especially that last one, especially given in the last two years, leaders were on the hook for answers, for certainty, for clarity that they often couldn’t provide. So there was no shortage of sources of anxiety for you. Some external, like just declining budget or programs had to be cut and maybe people have to be let go, to just your own self-imposed pressures. It’s really a combination of the two.

Irvine: Yeah. And you know, I think that really segues nicely into the first idea that we want to kind of explore. So yes. Some of those things that were happening were out of my control, others were kind of more internally or precious. I absolutely put it upon myself, but at the end of the day, I think you just mentioned this a little bit earlier, anxiety is not the problem in and of itself. Anxiety happens. It’s what we do with it, that is the most critical thing. So Bridgette, could you speak a little bit about that about what we do with our anxiety?

Bridgette: Yeah. Because we’re always doing something with it.

Irvine: That’s true.

Bridgette: I think a good metaphor is an anxiety is a hot potato, and you don’t want to hold a hot potato, you want to do something with it. You want to throw it, you want to do something, because remember we said, it’s a state of unease in the face of real or imagined threats. So human beings are always doing something with their anxiety. Sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes not so good. So there’s a simple way or at least I find it helpful of remembering what we do with this hot potato of anxiety. And it’s a way we can kind of check-in with ourselves and see how is anxiety being managed both consciously and unconsciously,  I call it the four Ds of anxiety. To displace, distract, dissolve, or deploy. Those are really the options. And the first two are not conscious choices, and the last two are, we have to choose to dissolve anxiety, we have to choose to deploy.

So let’s talk about the first two displace and distract. So leaders displace anxiety, we all do. What do we do? We have a hot potato, we throw it at somebody and we say, catch now we don’t ever consciously intend to do this. Like I don’t want to infect you with my anxiety, but sometimes that’s what happens. And what we’re going talk about a little bit later is when it comes to leadership behavior around communication decision making, dealing with conflict, when we’re anxious, it definitely impacts those behaviors and then people absorb that. So that’s displacing. Sometimes we distract ourselves because we’re feeling anxious again. Raise your hand if you like feeling anxious, no hands are raised. So we do something that numbs our anxiety. Yeah. And we all have our favorite ways of doing that. It might be like you have this big project, you know you have to get started on it. You’re anxious about it because you’re not sure where to start and there are some stumbling blocks and so instead of starting it, maybe you’ll do a little social media scrolling. Maybe you’ll get up and walk down the hall and talk to some…anything, but start that darn project, or maybe we have our glass of wine.

Irvine: I’m raising my hand now. Guilty of actually all of that.

Bridgette: And we all do all of that. So what do we want to do, what is more empowering? What fuels resilience more are the last two Ds, dissolving and deploying it. So let’s talk about those. All right, so dissolving anxiety. Well, the good news is that we can engage in activities that calm the nervous system. And we’ve talked about some of those, like six-second centering, mindful breathing, just taking a pause to stretch, to stand, to go outside and feel the sun on your face, exercise, prayer, there are a lot of things that calm our nervous systems. Irvine, what’s something that calms your nervous system.

Irvine: It is breathing and getting into a kind of patterned breathing. I like what’s called box breathing. Which is really kind of a pattern of three breathing in pausing, breathing out pausing. And that just really calms me down, it focuses me and just gives me that space [cross-talk 10:04] choice.

Bridgette: Yeah. And six-second centering for me is probably my go-to, for trying to bring that anxiety level down a few notches. So there’s the dissolving and then there’s the deploying and that’s where we face a real threat with courage and conviction. And we use our anxiety to galvanize us, to focus us. And that’s what anxiety is at its best, that’s really why we even have anxiety as human beings. Can you think of a time, Irvine, when you were working with somebody and, and they were experiencing as a leader a fair measure of anxiety, but they were able to either dissolve some of it or deploy it? Does anything come to mind?

Irvine: Yeah. So there’s one that comes to mind certainly on the dissolving and a little bit of the deploying added on was with an entrepreneur. One of the things that were not one of their favorite tasks was sales calls and yet they realized this is the life led by my business. If I’m not reaching out, calling people, et cetera, and yet it was something they hated. So we began to explore a little bit about what’s this hatred, and why is it? And of course, there was a whole story around this and the story was about rejection, the story was that people didn’t need me et cetera, but it was causing massive anxiety. And one of the things that they came to awareness of was that they were really distracting themselves. So whenever a morning would come and they had to make a sales call, what would happen is that, oh, I need to finish this presentation, or I need to do this PowerPoint, or I need to do… and it was they’re justifying it.

They were all wonderful things for their business, but it wasn’t getting to what they needed to do. So we explored what was going on there. And one of the tools that we used for dissolving it that she found really useful was reimagining. Kind of really go into imagining what would it feel like, What would it look like if you were connecting with someone and it was a really positive conversation? And so that was helpful. And then the second thing was just a reframing, in that instead of feeling that this call is going to annoy a person, imagine if you have something that will make their lives easier. So what you’re offering and this person actually dealt with conflict and conflict resolution, and think about the pain that this person is experiencing and then just think about what you could offer them. And that really helped them to kind of reframe and then also just a little bit of a pause and to really be aware of their tendency to distract. And they still don’t love sales calls, but it is something that they have certainly eased their anxiety over.

Bridgette: Yeah. That’s a great example because what I heard in that was there was some distracting definitely going on at the beginning. Like I’m not going touch this hot potato, uhuh. And there’s some storytelling and so forth and then how you helped them was really to reframe the situation, and we’re going talk about that later so stick around to the end when we talk about that as a core practice. So I would just invite our listeners to kind of pause here and think about something that it could be creating some anxiety for you right now. Some challenges, some dilemmas some sources of pressure, and check-in with yourself. What are you doing with that hot potato? Because you’re doing something and in what ways might you be unconsciously displacing it to others, maybe distracting yourself from it, and how might you dissolve or deploy it? That’s the trick. We can always be in that conversation with ourselves.

Okay. So now, Irvine, I know that one of the things we’re both committed to is grounding these conversations in neuroscience and fortunately for us, there is so much neuroscience research being done now and so many interesting findings that really help us as human beings and as leaders, to manage these pressures. So what would you like to share with listeners about the neuroscience of anxiety and where it comes from?

Irvine: Well, you know, let me start with an example. I did in the beginning, talk a little bit about my trip to Ireland and I was kind of the quasi-tour guide there so there was a little bit of residual anxiety going on about that. Will everything work out? Will it be wonderful? And on the [inaudible 14:41] day I found myself waking up about 2:00 AM and there just was this little bit of anxiety about will everything go right? This is the final day and there’s a couple of things to do here, we’re supposed to meet this tour guide and will this tour guide be good and, and will we get to see enough of Dublin? And so I was just kind of thinking these things, all these self-imposed anxiety. And so I kind of twisted and turned and I thought about it, and eventually, I got back to sleep, and the alarm plan went off. We had to wake a little earlier because we had to have a COVID test to ensure that we were able to return back to the US.

So I woke up, I was tired. I was kind of feeling [inaudible 15:18] and I needed that, those hours of sleep. Anyway, I got up and everyone was feeling good, excited about the day, [inaudible 15:254] COVID test, went in to have breakfast, and I just ordered my big Irish fry, big Irish breakfast, the mare de comes over and he says, hello, sir. We need to speak to you for a minute. And so I got up and in my mind, I’m thinking, oh my God was breakfast, not covered? Do we have to pay for this? I have all these other stories.

And we get outside of the restaurant and he goes, look, I’m, I’m sorry to inform you, but you’ve tested positive for COVID and we need you to go to the room. And so it was an absolute flabbergasting shock. I did not expect it, I don’t why I didn’t expect it. It was a possibility, but I just didn’t expect it. My heart sunk. I could feel my heart beating, a cold sweat, and just my whole body was numb, and in this, what do I do? And I could feel the shock for about five or six seconds and then it was like, well, what do I do? Where do I go from here? What’s going to happen.

So really, it set in course, a level of anxiety that lasted for days afterward. But I think that scenario really is a great gateway into looking at what neuroscience tells us about anxiety. Because if you look at them, there are two different ways that anxiety actually begins. One is what we think about. So in this example, I woke up at 2:00 AM, and here I am through my own thought process about what was going to happen, et cetera, all of that was causing my anxiety. The second was something was news, unexpected, total shock, and all of a sudden my body started reacting without conscious thought, just reacting to this threat because this was used was a threat at many different levels. Was a threat to me personally about my health, but it was a threat to the group, et cetera.

And I think what neuroscience tells us is there are really two different pathways to the origins of anxiety in the brain. One is the cortex based, this frontal cortex where our thought or higher reasoning, so we can get ourselves into anxiety just by thinking. And then the second is the amygdala based, which is our response. When we have a potential threat in our bodies, the fight-flight or freeze. And this is what happens in our bodies. And so I think that insight can really help us really nuance anxiety and where the anxiety is coming from.

Bridgette: It’s fascinating because the amygdala-based anxiety is instantaneous and I could hear it. It was, your body took over, it was flooded with chemicals and, you were preparing to fight, flee or freeze. And I think you did a little freezing there.

Irvine: I did a little freeze. There was a freezing. And then there was fighting, I think it went through it all. It really was one of the strongest reactions I’ve had actually in many years.

Bridgette: Yeah. And so that amygdala sense of threat before your conscious mind did anything with it so there was that. All of our listeners can relate both to that, and then also waking up in the middle of the night with a mind that is racing and it just creates anxiety. And here’s the thing that I think is so helpful for all of us to understand is that anxiety takes place in the brain. It doesn’t take place out there. It takes place here. And that insight is really important. So Irvine, how does understanding that there are these two different pathways, to anxiety, how like how’s that helpful to leaders?

Irvine: Well I think it’s very helpful because I think understanding the genesis of where this is coming from gives us a perspective on what’s happening at this moment. So in other words, if we’re experiencing say anxiety, which is because of our thought process and where our thoughts are going, that gives us an insight, well then how can I engage my mind in a different way that might be giving me a clue to deal with this anxiety? Or if the anxiety is coming from our amygdala, if it’s sudden, it means that we have to begin to engage to calm our nervous system. I’m thinking of a quote there, someone told me I think it’s from one of the teachers in our Georgetown coaching program said, the best gift that a leader can offer their followers is a well-regulated, nervous system.

Bridgette: Perfect.

So knowing that we’ve been triggered, knowing that, then we can like you’ve mentioned six-second centering breathing exercise. There are different ways that we can begin to intervene that can help us move away from the fright or the fight or the freeze into a more regulated system where we’re allowed to engage the neocortex and the thinking mind a little bit better.

Bridgette: Yeah, for sure. It’s like once the amygdala has been triggered, you can’t think your way out of the stress response, it’s already a done deal. What you can do is cooperate with it and allow it to discharge, or engage in activities that help the nervous system to discharge that stress response. But the cortex-based anxiety that’s when we think thoughts that create anxiety, and then those thoughts and that anxiety may in fact trigger the amygdala, so we might end up having [cross-talk 20:53]

Irvine: Totally.

Bridgette: And so what’s interesting to me about this is that the cortex is a cause of anxiety, but it’s also the seat of the solution to anxiety, and so speak to that.

Irvine: Yeah. Because really then that enables us to engage with our logic or reason our thoughtfulness. So often the thoughts, and the process won’t have any basis in reality. You mentioned at the very beginning, that we can imagine threats when there are none out there. So in other words, we’re able then to engage that thinking part of our brain to assess how useful is this response? Is this really a threat? Does it really pose danger to me? And then, be more thoughtful in our responses. And in fact, at the end of our podcast today, we’re actually going to show a practice or share a practice that will be able to kind of reframe and change your interpretations, which will really help calm some of the anxiety that we’re feeling.

Bridgette: Yeah. It’s almost like we’re suggesting that we become a bit skeptical of our cerebral cortex thoughts because we take them as fact. But just by kind of introducing some curious questions, we’re now helping to calm the cortex and activate the part of our brain that can also help us see more clearly. what’s really in front of us. And of course we all, as leaders and as human beings, all have those restless nights that you spoke about. Even then understanding that so much of what is disrupting our sleep and our peace is the cortex’s interpretation. Okay, great. That is so, so helpful.

Irvine: So we’ve talked now about kind of how anxiety comes to us, we’ve talked about two different pathways, so no matter how it comes, it does impact us. It impacts our behavior, and an important question for all people and especially leaders to ask is, how do I behave when I’m anxious? And that can be pretty hard to see in ourselves. So Bridgette what are some ways that leaders tend to behave when they’re anxious?

Bridgett: Yeah. The first thing to keep in mind is that we always go to extremes. So, when we’re anxious, we’re not nuanced. And I also think it’s helpful to kind of hone in on a couple of behaviors rather than just leaving it, like, how do leaders behave when anxious, because you want to be an observer of this. So let’s talk about three areas that which anxiety can affect a leader. And that’s communication, how do you communicate when you’re anxious? Decision-making, what happens to your decision-making when you become anxious? And then what about conflict? When anxiety levels rise, how do you tend to respond to conflict? So let’s take ’em one at a time and talk about communication.

So obviously we’re communicating all day long as leaders, whether it’s on a zoom call, in person, emails, and so forth. And when we become anxious, our communication may let’s say become very abrupt and very curt, like our emails are like two sentences. People go, oh, what’s up with that? Or we become very long-winded and we don’t get to the point. Another way communication can be impacted by anxiety is that we might just withdraw. We might shut down. But another person when they’re feeling anxious might dominate the entire conversation. So the first question to our listeners is what happens to your communication when you become anxious? And so Irvine, I’m going to ask you that question. What happens to your communication?

Irvine: It’s interesting for me, I’ve noticed within myself, that there are two different trends with anxiety. One is with written communication, with written communication. I tend to delay or put off a response So if I’m in emails, then either I will write very short responses or not respond at all. And then the second, when I’m speaking, I tend to get louder. I can get very loud, I get more animated, but it’s interesting, my body language, my voice is getting louder, but I can see that I’m not making contact. My eye contact is less than it normally is and so I’m a little more protective, but I’m, much louder and quicker and want to kind of get the idea out there.

Bridgette: Yeah. I can relate to that. So again, to our listeners, the question is when you’re anxious, what do people see in your communication? And Irvine, I can relate to the whole email thing because if my inbox fills up and I have a lot of things going on and feeling a lot of pressure, I have a hard time getting in there and attacking that. So let’s talk about decision-making because obviously leaders are called to make decisions. It’s part of the job. And yet when a leader is feeling anxious, their decision-making can definitely be impacted. So there’s the one extreme of seeking the quick fix, like, okay, I’m anxious, we got to do something, let’s fix this. And we act precipitously, without maybe enough understanding, or we could go to the other extreme and resist deciding at all and kind of crave more and more and more and more information. And so Irvine, where would you put yourself on those two?

Irvine: Oh, I am so a quick fix person. And it’s interesting because for me, I interpret kind of the ongoing kind of the indecision, et cetera, and I need to shut this down because it feels uncomfortable. And it also opens a door, a threat that, that there might be new diversions or sectors, so I need to shut this down. So I’m definitely a quick-fix version.

Bridgette: Yeah. So again, it’s just, if we can become that curious observer of where we tend to go with decision-making when we’re anxious, then we can kind of be like, well, wait a second. And then the last area I think can be helpful in terms of how anxiety impacts leisure behavior in conflict. Nobody likes conflict, but when we’re anxious, our default around conflict might come forward and we may have an avoidance of conflict deepen our bones, and so the more anxious we are, the more avoidant we are, or we might want to suppress the conflict and appease it prematurely. On the other hand, maybe conflict when it arises and we’re anxious, we become more combative. We become more confrontational and it’s just interesting where we go. So observing those extremes around communication decision making, conflict. Irvine, I saw a smile on your face when I was talking about conflict. What was going through your mind?

Irvine: Oh, well come no surprise. I am an avoider and I know that’s deep-seated within me in my childhood, in Northern Ireland. But it’s interesting, there’s a connection for me between decision-making and conflict because at times I want to shut down, I want to make decisions because the longer they’re open, the more chance for conflict there is. And so in a way, one is linked to the other for me. But the conflict for me is an opportunity for misunderstanding and I catastrophize what could happen. I’ve seen that in my leadership career. I’ve seen avoiding a problem and in my mind saying, it’ll take care of itself, but really what it was is my anxiety saying just don’t deal with it and putting it off to a later date, and of course, it never solves the problem.

Bridgette: Oh, for sure. I’m thinking of a client that I worked with whose philosophy around decision making, just in normal times even if he wasn’t particularly anxious was it’s better to decide something and do something and then tweak it than to never decide at all. So he already leans that way, but then as things became more anxious in his organization, wow. He was just like, he would interrupt people and he would say, we got to do something. And I could see that what was normally a very helpful strength of his under the pressure and under the influence of anxiety, he displaced his anxiety onto others.

So going back to the notion of what do we do with our anxiety? Well, we displace it in ways. We’re not aware of when our communication, our decision-making, or our management of conflict becomes infected by the anxiety as opposed to informed by it. So, Irvine, you’ve mentioned a couple of interesting things, and earlier on you talked about when you woke up at two in the morning, that whole example, recognizing if our cortex is the source of our anxiety, that there’s an opportunity for us to employ a certain strategy. And you use the word reframing, and I think that’s the core practice we want to leave folks with.

Irvine: Yeah. The core practice today is when we find ourselves in those situations where our anxiety has what we’ve called the cortex-based anxiety. It’s our thoughts and we all give interpretations to different things. Each of us can experience the same, same thing happening to us, but we interpret it differently. And so what we want to try and do is this reframing, and basically, it’s based on this knowledge that it’s not the event itself so often that causes us problems, but it’s our interpretation often. So here’s how the practice will work. First of all, I want you to think about a current situation that you feel anxious about. Just give yourself a few seconds to think about that.

And as you bring that to mind, it’s possible to identify different interpretations perhaps that is causing you to feel anxious. What are your thoughts or assumptions are you making about this situation, about the other people involved, or about the level of risk of threat, perhaps that you’re assigning to this situation? In many ways, get curious about it. You’ve decided on one interpretation, but could there be others? And then do a little brainstorming to see, can you come up with some alternate interpretations of this situation or this event. Play around, and notice that different interpretations can lead you to different emotional responses.

Let’s take the example of driving the car and someone cuts in front of you. One interpretation is this person’s ignorant, they’re bad. The second interpretation could be they’re late for work and they may get fired. A third interpretation could be there’s an emergency at home and they’re trying to get there. A fourth interpretation could be someone has a medical emergency in the car and they’re trying to get to the hospital.

And so then lastly, modify your interpretation, pick the one that feels most realistic or accurate to you, but pick the one that makes you feel calmer or more balanced and in a more empowered state of mind. Now, that sounds easier than it is and our cortex, it’s very powerful in its interpretations, but the more that we can really take some time to consider different interpretations. And if we get into the habit of the practice of doing that, it actually becomes easier and we can become a little more playful around that, and it’ll become much easier to see that we are putting too much weight into one interpretation and in fact, there are many, many different interpretations out there.

Bridgette: I love that. And I feel calmer just listening to that. I feel like when I get in the car this afternoon, I almost want somebody to cut me off so I can practice instead of saying you idiot, hey, maybe there’s an emergency, but isn’t it just fascinating that we can work with our brains, not against them?

Irvine: Yeah.

Bridgette: Man. We have covered some great territory. What were you going to say?

Irvine: I was about to say there’s actually a reframing I did myself in Ireland. When the anxiety had gone and people had left and I was left in, part of it is that I had to go into isolation in my hotel room in Ireland until I tested negative so it could’ve been there five or six days, but one of the ways that I really got through that was to reframe the situation. And in my mind, I said, the universe, Ireland has something to say to me, it wanted me to stay for a little bit, and the way I reframed it was that. And so can I take some time just to really think about where I am in my life and what’s the message that the universe wants to send to me. And I found that a little more calming, but it really helped me get through some of the anxiety

Bridgette: Yeah. And helped you to be resilient, for how long did you end up having to…?

Irvine: Six days.

Bridgette: So those six days could have been a lot worse. Had you not found a way to reframe the anxiety. That’s wonderful. All right. So gosh, we’ve covered a lot of territory in this conversation. Thank you, Irvine. We talked about leadership anxiety in terms of like, what is it and why is it just a part of the job description and what do we do with this hot potato? And sometimes we do things that aren’t helpful and sometimes we can do something with that that makes things much, much better. And then how does it originate in the brain? Which I think is so fascinating. I hope our listeners remember this. Anxiety starts in the brain. It’s not out there, it’s in here. And then how does it affect our behavior? Because none of us are immune to it and to continue to be good observers of how your communication, your decision making, and your conflict resolution are impacted by pressure, by anxiety. And lastly, remember this great practice that Irvine just introduced. Thank you so much. And Irvine, what is next up in terms of our next episode?

Irvine: Well, next episode, we’re going to look at the stories we tell ourselves and how they impact our decisions. And the episode is called Once Upon a Time.

Bridgette: Love it. Look forward to having that conversation with you Irvine and thank you to all of our listeners for joining us. And we look forward to being with you next time.

Irvine: Bye everyone.