How to Stress Less with Dr. Kathleen Hall

If you've been feeling the stress lately, then this episode is for you. As the founder of The Stress Institute and the Mindful Living Network, Dr. Kathleen Hall has helped tens of thousands of people get a better handle on stress. She started her career in finance working at the World Trade Center in New York, but after working on Wall Street, she made a decision to leave power, wealth and corporate stress behind her.  She now specializes in stress management, mindful living, and work life balance. In this interview, she not only touches on a key stress management tool that can benefit kids and adults alike, but she shares the one word that she believes is key in helping us all live a more mindful, less-stressed life.

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Transcript

Dr. Kathleen Hall: [00:00:00] At every medical research institution in the world, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, we have proven over and over again. This is where science meets the soul, changes your brain chemistry. We process 100, 000 get this chemical reactions a second. So if you don't think just two minutes is going to help you, and again, I hope that once you do it two minutes, you'll grow it longer.

Michelle Dawn Mooney: Hey, it's Michelle. Welcome to Conversations. I'm looking forward to bringing you some new guests in the coming months. But in the meantime, this one is from the vault. Raise your hand if you've ever felt stressed. Or maybe you're feeling stressed right now. With summer wrapping up, you can almost feel an uptick of stress in the air.

As many families are adapting to back to school schedules, and even if you don't have kids, we are all constantly surrounded by stress, whether it's from our professional or personal lives. While it's impossible to completely eliminate stress, The good news is there are ways to [00:01:00] manage it. As the founder of the Stress Institute and the Mindful Living Network, Dr.

Kathleen Hall has helped tens of thousands of people get a better handle on stress. She started her career in finance working at the World Trade Center in New York, but after working on Wall Street, she made a decision to leave power, wealth, and corporate stress behind her. She now specializes in stress management, mindful living, and work life balance.

She's been featured on nearly every major media outlet, including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, ESPN, Fortune, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, to name a few. She is a sought after spokesperson and keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft and Procter Gamble, and is the author of four books, including Mindful Living Every Day.

Dr. Hall lives with her family in Atlanta, where she continues her work with animal rescue groups, hospitals, and inner city public schools. And I'm honored to say that after interviewing her several times over the past few years, she's [00:02:00] become a friend. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Kathleen Hall.

Hi, Kathleen. 

Dr. Kathleen Hall: Hello. I've missed you. 

Michelle Dawn Mooney: I've missed you. And every time I see you, it's, it's automatically, you are just a source of relaxation for me because I already know what we're going to talk about. 

Dr. Kathleen Hall: Well, but you know, the world has, you know, of all the times we've talked, this is the most dramatic change in human history.

Everybody's talking about survive, survive, survive. There's a lack of desperate energy in that. So we need to. You know, maybe shift the recording and to thrive, we, we really all have to quit living in this defensive posture because it's really, uh, I don't know what to say, stresses the epidemic of the 21st century.

I would probably compare where we are now to world war two in England. where they were surrounded, you know, the Germans were coming, they had no food, they were being bombed every night. The stress level that we are under psychologically right now is very similar. 

Michelle Dawn Mooney: Yeah. [00:03:00] And we have never lived through a time like we have the last two years, but is it just that?

What do you think are the factors that are really, because everybody sees it, that we are just a ball of stress and it seems like it has never been this bad? 

Dr. Kathleen Hall: It's first thing when we start, everybody needs to have compassion for yourself, your family and others. I don't care if you're in the grocery store line and you don't like somebody in front of you, the gas station, you know, everybody, please understand that in the latest surveys we have, it's showing over 90 percent of not just Americans.

But people globally are the most stressed that they have ever been. And so we came out of the pandemic. Okay. We got the vaccines moved and we thought, Oh, it's going to be over. But then we had the Omicron variants. And of course, for me personally, my husband's a physician. My daughter is a critical care physician.

So we've lived in pure, literally hell for the last couple of years, but we thought we were going to come out. That was going to be gone. It's not. Then we come out of it with all of these mental health problems. [00:04:00] We come out of it with. Inflation. We never thought that we would have shootings, but everybody needs to know that in this is fine.

We're going to get through this. , this is not the Titanic. This is not the Lusitania. , this is, , a great, big, beautiful life raft. And you can, in your guided imagery, paint it any color you want. If orange is your favorite color, pink, blue. And we're all in it together singing kumbaya. And, and we can, we are going to get through this.

We need to be courageous. , we need to be compassionate and we need to be kind. I think kindness is the healing balm right now. Not one thing, not anything is going to solve all this. The only thing you can do is manage yourself and realize this is the only. The only life you're going to have, and every moment, time is the only thing you have and that you can control, your own precious, sacred time.

Are you going to volunteer to help other people? Are you going to help the person next door who's got three kids that are screaming? Is there an [00:05:00] older couple across the street that you can help them with? Mow their lawn, or go take them some soup, or take them to the hospital. I don't care what age you are, you will remember.

What you did during this time, if it forwarded the best character out in you, uh, the best traits of yourself are the worst. My husband and I and our family has always lived with every obstacles and opportunity. It really is. 

Michelle Dawn Mooney: Absolutely. And I think of how diamonds are formed. under pressure. And we are definitely under a lot of pressure, but a lot of good can come from this time as well.

So let's get to the good part, because this is why I'm really excited to have you here, because we all know about the craziness that's going on. And we see it, we feel it, we hear it, it's everywhere. But let's talk about the good. promise of hope that we have to get through this. How do we do that? What are some fun ways and some easy ways that we can try to navigate through all this [00:06:00] craziness?

Dr. Kathleen Hall: , the first thing I remember, I did was, , after I did my clinical training at Harvard, I developed this, , it's a very simple acronym. Don't forget it. It's called S E L F. S E L F care. Okay. So S is for serenity, which is the stress reduction practice. E is exercise. L is love and F is food. Okay.

Serenity, exercise, love, and food. So what to remember is every day and what I suggest and what I do is I set my timer on my phone for every two hours and every two hours, this beautiful little music comes on and I stop at that point. Okay. You can choose one of the four to do. Serenity. If I choose serenity, I'll go for two minutes.

I'll inhale to the count of four and exhale to the count of four. Inhale. Or I might do music. I have a playlist that has relaxing music. I may do a guided imagery where I close my eyes, take a deep breath and pretend I'm on my horse [00:07:00] riding through the pasture. So whatever brings you calm and serenity in that two minutes, Just two minutes.

What we know is it resets your thermostat. It redoes your brain. It's just like pushing delete or restarting your computer. You can think, oh, it's just a couple of minutes. And what I hope is when you do these things for two minutes, You'll see such a reaction in your body and your confidence in yourself and other people in your family and your people that work with you will say, wow, you really have it together, or You seem angry before the meeting and now you seem calm.

This is for serenity. E is exercise. Walk around the block. Walk around your office. Walk around your house. Somebody like myself, I've got these amazing. Huge stairs. So sometimes I'll just walk up and down the stairs for two minutes or you can do yoga stretches in your chair Please when I say exercise, it doesn't mean getting on a treadmill or you know Jogging a marathon our body was meant to move and we're living in a world [00:08:00] right now Where we live in our computers and these beautiful bodies have to move.

E is just exercise which means movement L is love. , isolation kills, community heals, and this is what happened in the pandemic too. We got isolated. We are human beings. We were meant to connect. Sometimes I'll just choose love. I'll send my sister an amazingly hilarious cartoon or something. She hits me back.

Sometimes we'll just pick up the phone and laugh, or I have a tribe of women that are my friends, or I may see one of my neighbors walking outside. walking their dog and I'll run out and just talk to Margaret for a couple minutes. And then I give her a hug and come back in. But it's got to be something with love.

Remember to it's, you know, don't get to Friday and go, you know, I didn't talk to any of my friends or email them or text. No, you put it in your schedule. Okay, so every day you should have love. Remember the two minutes and then F is food. I do not believe in diet, the word diet, 92 [00:09:00] percent of humans see the word diet as negative.

They hate it. We've all been on diets with, with, it's a terrible word. Food is holy. It's sacred. It's celebrations from the beginning of time. Food is celebration. So remember some foods hype you up, , too much coffee, too much sugar, , too much diet Coke, whatever it is. Hey, be aware of the food you're putting in your body.

If you need to calm down for that two minutes, you might want to get yourself a cup of soup. You may want to get yourself a cup of green tea or a glass of tea. We love iced tea. I'm in the South. I'm in Atlanta. So we live off tea, unsweet tea. And all of these things can calm you down. And again, you can Google relaxing foods, relaxing drinks, chamomile tea, raspberry tea, whatever you do.

So, Every two hours, you're choosing. So sometimes I'm just sitting here and I don't feel like doing it moving. I don't feel like contacting. So I'm just going to sit here and do choose [00:10:00] us, get it. So you have a choice of every single thing. Serenity, exercise, love, and food. At every medical research institution in the world, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, we have proven over and over again, this is where science meets the soul.

Changes your brain chemistry. We need to remember we're like a big vegetable soup with peas and butter beans and tomatoes in it. So everything that happens here changes your chemical soup. We process 100, 000, get this, chemical reactions a second. in our brain. So if you don't think just two minutes is gonna help you.

And again, I hope that once you do it two minutes, you'll grow it longer. And don't forget to share it with your spouse, your partner, your kids. It's really huge. So that's number one is self care. The second thing very quickly is please have a family meeting once a week. And I have a curriculum for a mindful family meeting.

But [00:11:00] choose what week what weeknight it is when everybody can get together. It doesn't vary. It's like a church service. Our family has this family meeting. And during that time you meet, you go around and you check in. How are you? Are you having problems at school? You know, everybody talks about where they are.

My work is too much pressure. Then you go, well, what do I need help with? What kind of problems? I have a, I'm under a lot of pressure. I have a project due Thursday. I've got a report due mom at school. So everybody is on the same page. The next thing is you pull out a family calendar. Everybody looks at the family calendar.

Everybody's on the same page. So there's no surprise. So these, and then when you finish, everybody goes around. Says what they're grateful for in their lives and you finish with a snack with this dress our children are withdrawing They're going to their bedrooms. They're being on technology If you do this once a week and you're checking in you'll notice everything from their skin color changing to them being [00:12:00] nervous Making no eye contact being fidgety, you know, you can tell when they're Holding secrets.

Also, if you do it every week, they'll learn to trust this sacred space that you have created. And the key with parents, you have to be vulnerable because it opens your children to be vulnerable. They think you're having these family meetings just to get information from them. It's not going to work. It's really important.

And also one of the big things too is please get some kind of little tiny bookcase. That's right by your garage, right? As you load your car every single day and everybody puts their homework there, you put your mug there to make sure you put your coffee for the car. You put your keys there, you put your purse there, because part of the commuter stress and the biggest stressors I get from a lot of families is they forget things in the car.

They scream, they fight, they come back. So that little cubby right by the door, everybody's got their name on a shelf. And everything goes there when you come in from the [00:13:00] bank and when you leave in the morning. 

Michelle Dawn Mooney: There's so much there and I hope everybody's taking notes because there's a lot to to digest and you'll probably want to watch this a few times.

But when you talk about the forgetfulness, because I think we sometimes forget when we're so taxed with stress, our body does crazy things, and memory, uh, forgetfulness, that distracted, you can't focus, that's all part of it. If we're not properly giving ourselves that self care and trying to do even through the stress, at least make sure that our bodies are functioning at the best optimal performance that they can.

It's so important. trickles down to everything. And when I tell you there are so many, I've always, I think we all forget things here and there. But there have been so many times my husband, he has driven away with a coffee cup on top of the car. You know, there's there's forgotten lunches there. I forgot this, you know, didn't pick this up, didn't take that this so and so's [00:14:00] birthday.

We're so overwhelmed. Those layers that we talked about in the beginning, the more layers there are, the more we just kind of like implode if we don't navigate through that and really take those steps to to function better. And I think the self part of exercise and the love and the serenity and the food all together.

I think that was one of the things that I feel was overlooked during COVID. Not getting into any type of political talk or anything with this, but when you talk about vaccines, you talk about wearing masks, you talk about staying away from people, but the healthier we are as human beings, I don't care if it's COVID, if it's the flu, if it's anything, mental health, physical health, the stronger we are, the more We're going to be able to fight off whatever is going to come our way.

Dr. Kathleen Hall: If I had another vaccine booster, , that I could make myself and pass it around, it would be kindness. Because I think, , even when I let somebody in line at, [00:15:00] at, at the grocery store or you let somebody, my husband was in horrible Atlanta traffic yesterday and somebody let him in and he was, you know, mobile.

He didn't have anything in his hand, but he was talking to me and he almost cried. He said, I can't believe this man let me in. And he'd had a horrible operating experience with a patient. He had, he was on his way to his off seat. And it was just a little piece of kindness that, , I was so shocked. And I talked to, , a patient of mine that was depressed and thinking about suicide.

And she was standing on a corner crossing a street and she was, just disoriented, thinking about doing horrible things. And this is just recently and changing jobs, her kids, all kinds of just overwhelmed. Some man turned around, he made a U turn, put his flashers on and got out and said, are you okay? 

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Dr. Kathleen Hall: And she said, what? And he said, I just, you had a funny look on your face. And I just, I'm late for work, but I just could not go to work and see your face in my heart all day long.

And he said, okay. And she burst out crying. And [00:17:00] she said, I can't believe you stopped. And you know, in that kind of a voice. And he said, wouldn't we go get a cup of coffee? Totally late. He was totally late for work. Didn't know this woman from Adam's house cat. These little acts of kindness can literally transform a person's life.

So let's all, you know what I mean? Instead of being short and that's a spiritual discipline, you have to keep saying today, I'm going to start with kindness. To them, you know, um, we can say, oh, I'm going to love everybody. That's huge. And that's, and that's all this other stuff. , Kindness, I, I, I can't even, I went to get yogurt and, , yesterday and I'm short, so I was reaching public trying to get it and this very tall woman, beautiful, gorgeous came up behind me and she taps me on the shoulder and I thought, oh my God, she's going to.

Get me first and trying to stand on the ledge, right? I thought, Oh, my God, I self critical. She smiles at these beautiful, gorgeous teeth. And she goes, , you know what? I played roundball basketball in college and I'm [00:18:00] really tall. And she said, Would you like me to get that yogurt for you? And she's I said, Oh, my God, she reaches just as beautiful and reaches and hands me the yogurt.

She said, Is there anything somebody directionally challenged like you need? I went, Well, over in the bean aisle, two for the price of one, could you walk over there with me? And she went, so we became friends, changed phone numbers. 

She's a teacher. So see one little act of kindness, you know, and, and, and so anyway, , it's, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

It opens our hearts in ways that we wouldn't open everybody. And remember, stress makes you close down. This is part of our DNA adaptation to stress. If I see somebody coming at me through the woods or I hear a noise, I don't understand, or I know that I'm not going to be able to pay for something or me getting kicked out of my cave, I close in, I protect everything.

So it's not actually a natural response to be [00:19:00] open. So this is why it's a practice. It's a spiritual practice. It's a psychological practice and it will teach your children, the people you work with. It'll spread just like oxygen. 

Michelle Dawn Mooney: Right? If only we can spread the good stuff as much as we spread the bad stuff.

Once again, it all comes back to connection. We're all in this together. And if we can remember that, and you made such a great point with you never know what somebody else is going through. And you could see the tears coming when you told me that story about the woman who was just you know, on the brink of, of not sure where she was going to go next.

You never know what people are going through. And if we can remember that, because when we're having those bad days, we can be good people. But if you're having a bad day, like my husband can tell you the other day, I'm like, I can't take this. I was getting a little feisty, you know, it's hot, you know, things aren't going well, the heat makes everything like more escalated.

I consider myself a relatively You know, nice person on the average day, but I was not having a good one. [00:20:00] But if, if somebody sees just one snippet of you having a bad day or, or not being necessarily yourself, 

Dr. Kathleen Hall: do what you do. For an example, we make ice cream. I have a Jim's mother's hundred year old ice cream recipes, and we make them in an old fashioned ice cream freezer, which is in Georgia time.

So I made peach ice cream. So what I do is I put it in little containers. Well, it's homemade peach ice cream. I keep spoons at the front door. I keep it in the freezer. So the UPS person, the postal person, everybody, you know, in the front, check out people at Publix, put it in the fridge. I take people these things and, and they go, you're going to give me that?

Really? I peeled those peaches and made all that myself. And that's a hundred year old recipe. So you, every one of us, if you're a soup maker, If you're a, you know, whatever you do in the winter, I make soups, I freeze them in little, you know, containers, eight ounce containers, keep a spoon by the front door.

I don't care if you're delivering something to me or whatever you're doing, if [00:21:00] you're fixing my electricity. Everybody leaves, pull it out of the freezer, and I have little bags and put a bow around the top. We can do amazing things for each other and whatever your gift is, whatever that is. I happen, you know, to have old, old, old recipes that were passed down for forever.

And you know, I, I love surprising these people. The little UPS guy was so adorable. He must've been all of 20. He came back the next day and just was real emotional, came up and he'd lost his mother and his grandmama used to make peach ice cream. And so he didn't, I didn't know that he didn't know that he went down and stopped the UPS truck, truck down the street and started crying.

He said, and ate the peach ice cream. Who knows that? Do you see, but we do, you just do it because we all need to connect more than ever. We do. So let's all hold hands. I mean, you can joke about that old Coca Cola commercial. Do you remember when everybody had different races and they went around the [00:22:00] world?

I'd like to teach them. You know, I'm like you, man, I could have my bad days, good days, but I got news for you at my stage of life. I have been through some good, bad, ugly, everything, you know, losing money, losing a child, losing, you know, business losing, whatever. And, and now on the other side, Oh my God, the blessings that came out of everything.

Unbelievable. So we're courageous. We're all in this life boat together. Okay.

Michelle Dawn Mooney: I love you. I love when you can chat with me and I love that you have such a So much love in your heart that you want to spread in the world. And I'm so thankful that you were able to give me this time today and I know people out there are definitely going to be better for it and have some great tips.

So Dr. Kathleen Hall, she is the founder of the Stress Institute in Atlanta. She also is the founder of the Mindful Living Network, and you can visit both of those websites. Is it mindfullivingnetwork. com? Yes. 

Dr. Kathleen Hall: Yes. Yes. It's mindfullivinghealth. com. And we have a [00:23:00] meditation room in there too that's beautiful.

Michelle Dawn Mooney: Lots and lots of great tips and tricks to get through and navigate through all that stress. Kathleen, thank you so much for joining me. 

Dr. Kathleen Hall: Yes. You know, I always love you. You're such a light in our world. Thank you very much for everything you do. 

Michelle Dawn Mooney: Oh, Kathleen, I appreciate you so much. You have no idea. You're such an inspiration to me and so many other people.

And I thank you for, for what you do and for, for giving me this time is always so wonderful to have you here. So thank you. Yeah, you take care. Hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Kathleen Hall. Please visit her website, drkathleenhall. com to learn more about her work and connect with the Stress Institute and the Mindful Living Network.

If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love for you to leave a review to help more people find the show and feel free to subscribe to the podcast so you can hear more conversations like the one you heard today. Thanks for listening and remember, one person can make a difference and that difference maker could be you.

We'll see you soon.