The Benefits of Good Stress Jeff Krasno [Ep. 967]

 

This Week’s Episode: 

In this engaging conversation, Kimberly and Jeff Krasnow explore the themes of stress, resilience, and the balance between humor and seriousness in the wellness space. Jeff discusses his new book, ‘Good Stress,’ which emphasizes the health benefits of facing challenges and the importance of intentional stressors in fostering resilience. They delve into the intersection of science and mysticism, the transformative power of crisis, and the significance of emotional regulation in navigating life’s challenges. The discussion also highlights practical tools like fasting and ice plunging as methods for self-discovery and managing stress responses. In this conversation, Kimberly Snyder discusses the importance of creating a safe emotional environment for difficult conversations, emphasizing the need for emotional regulation and active listening. She shares her experiences of engaging in challenging dialogues and how these interactions helped her build psychological resilience.

About Jeff Krasno 

Jeff Krasno is the CEO and founder of Commune Media, a masterclass platform for well-being featuring the world’s most renowned authors and teachers. As the face of the platform, Jeff hosts the Commune podcast, which features over 520 episodes and currently generates over 750,000 monthly downloads, where he has interviewed a wide variety of luminaries from Deepak Chopra to Marianne Williamson to Matthew McConaughey. In addition, Jeff pens a weekly “Commusing” essay exploring well-being, spirituality, and culture that is distributed to an email list of over one million people.

The Commune brand comes to life on a 10-acre retreat center and production facility in Topanga, California, where Jeff hosts immersive events, book launches, and masterminds—including regular retreats where he lectures and leads participants through the protocols of Good Stress.

A prolific cultivator of community, Jeff is also the co-creator of Wanderlust, a global series of wellness events that have been integral to popularizing the practice and principles of yoga in the U.S. and beyond. In 2016, he was selected by Oprah Winfrey to be part of the SuperSoul100 as one of the nation’s leading entrepreneurs.

Episode Sponsors:

 

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Guest Resources

Book: Good Stress: The Health Benefits of Doing Hard Things 

 

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Jeff Krasnow and His New Book
03:13 The Balance of Humor and Seriousness in Wellness
06:00 Exploring the Intersection of Science and Mysticism
08:57 The Transformative Power of Stress and Crisis
12:08 Finding Stillness Amidst Chaos
14:57 Understanding Stress and Homeostasis
17:48 The Role of Intentional Stressors in Resilience
20:50 Navigating Difficult Conversations for Growth
24:10 Emotional Regulation and Its Importance
27:00 Fasting and Ice Plunging as Tools for Self-Discovery
30:45 Creating a Safe Space for Conversations
39:17 Building Psychological Resilience Through Dialogue
51:31 Finding Connection in Difficult Conversations
55:50 Embracing Life’s True Ease and Mortality

 

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KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

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Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.142)
Hi everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show I am so excited to share this conversation with you to be in conversation with my very dear friend Jeff Krasnow who has been on here at least twice before I mean it seems like I live here well welcome back seems like I’m in your guest room asking for bananas  One thing we don’t have a shortage of. so I would love to share that Jeff has a wonderful book out this week called Good Stress, the health benefits of doing hard things, which we’ll get into today. Ten protocols to extend your lifespan and your health span. I have known Jeff for I think at least a decade. I’ve known his wife, Skylar, more.

Jeff has also founded this incredible community media company. I’ve promoted my Beauty Inside Out course on there. There are many courses. Jeff also co-founded Wanderlust with his wife Skylar. They are creators. They’re amazing parents. They have three daughters. So there you are on paper, friend. Congrats on the new book. I like me on paper. I spread well on paper, like a nut butter.

Well, one of the things that comes across is, of course, your authenticity and your humor. Sometimes, you know, we were just talking about the book library over here. get both of us get sent a lot of books as well. Some of the books are a little bit challenging to get through. So what I really appreciate about the new book is, of course, the wonderful information, but also the stories, the writing.

Did you enjoy reading this? Because it feels like you did. I did enjoy writing the more self-deprecatory dad-jokey part of it. Because our world, our wellness space, can often be a Vesuvius of sanctimony from time to time. And for good reason, because health can be quite serious. Trauma is a serious…

Kimberly Snyder (02:17.006)
that should be taken seriously. At the same time, sometimes we have to have a little bit of levity with it and you take the medicine with a tiny bit of sugar. Well, it’s very spiritual, right? When we buy into the delusions or Eastern spirituality at least, when we buy in so much to things being just so or everything like this is the end, I’ll be all. We can…

by as well into the ego and the thoughts. You and I have always connected on the Dow. Sort of this limitlessness and then the spaciousness. And so part of that is, when you get into the center, there is more lightness. There can be more humor. There can be a lot less taking things, including ourselves, way less seriously. Yeah. Well, and I also have zero letters at the end of my name. So sometimes I pretend, but I cannot contend to be a doctor.

So I opt for the comical a little bit over the clinical. And at the same time, I am very interested in kind of rigorous empirical study of human physiology, but I also see a bridge between medicine and mysticism. And I’d like to play on that bridge. Sometimes it feels like our culture.

can overvalue just if you have the letters after your name and we’ve sort of given this sort of hierarchy pedestal to a lot of these doctors. And there is wisdom that many bring forth, but to your point, there’s also, let’s not discredit our own personal intuition, the experiential ness in which we have to shepherd our own wellbeing. And also, like you said, the mysticism and these amazing great ones that came forward, whether it’s Yogananda.

or totally, there’s so much, it’s not just, you know, and Dr. David Hawkins talked about this quite a bit as well, and he was a medical doctor, and he was also a psychiatrist. And he said, you know, when we overvalue science and the rational, we have to realize that so much of that is created by the limited human mind. So he was a mystic as well as a scientist, as Albert Einstein was in others. So we don’t wanna get, the point is rather that,

Kimberly Snyder (04:36.246)
There’s validity to the science. And I think there’s great metaphysical truth to be found in studying the physical. Yeah. Because that is often where the great foundational intelligence of the cosmos is patterned. Well, and all the heart work, right? We know the heart is an epicenter, it’s a gateway, and yet we can also measure the heart field, can measure heart coherence. Yeah. And I mean, without the luxury of

an electron microscope or even germ theory. You know, the Buddha had many, many intuitions, many revelations around the nature of reality. But those Satori are highly applicable to human physiology. And that’s where I actually like to spend a lot of my time is finding, you know, obviously the Bodhi tree gave a certain amount of inspiration to the Buddha.

in which he found like the nature of impermanence, for example, right? Yes. Or the nature of mutual interdependence or of Madhyamaka, the middle way. And these are all axioms and tenets that can be faithfully applied to the human body, the human body. It’s very, very impermanent. It’s fascinating when, you for me to study it empirically and see, you know, the construction and deconstruction of molecules, et cetera.

I also find it fascinating to see the body kind of in the context of Indra’s net, you know, that’s sort of the image for mutual interconnection that the Buddha had that, you know, the universe is this endless cobweb. And at every juncture of that cobweb is this crystalline diamond that reflects every other juncture. And this gave birth to this notion of pratitya summa pata or dependent origination. Essentially, I am.

because we are, that you cannot separate the function and behavior of your own organism from the function and behavior of the environment. And so I started calling myself an environmentism or an organment, you know, because we are one in the same thing, but that really violates our sense of identity often because I feel like a stable, reliable Jeff crouching somewhere here behind my eyes like a tiger.

Kimberly Snyder (06:59.112)
separate from the world, distinct and disjointed from it. This is my identity, Jeff. I called it something separate. And you know, I get up and there’s good reason to feel that way because I get up in the mirror. I get up in the morning, I look in the mirror and sort of give a little flex. And there I am. It’s Jeff. There’s a physical continuity that underwrites my anchoring of my identity. I’m the same guy I was yesterday. But when you actually open up the door and you take a look in,

I’m changing all the time. I am nothing but change. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah, I’m more or less, last time I counted, seven octillion atoms experiencing 37 billion billion, that’s not a typo, billion billion chemical reactions per second. I’m not the same dude that sat down here 10 minutes ago. So when John says, you can’t change, you’re like, I’m nothing but change. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah.

Well, it’s interesting because you told me about this book a while ago. And then I was like, oh, interesting. He’s talking about stressors and you you and I talk and you also write a lot of essays around comfort zones. And then recently having gone through in very close proximity and connection to the fires in LA and you know, we were very lucky to still have a home.

and so many of our community members really experienced such devastating loss, which has felt so much in our community, in our direct community with our friends. I will say, you one of the things that has been replaying a lot in my mind was that John, my husband, grabbed our kids in the smoke and shortly after the school burned down, right? There was just these moments and then, you know, we were evacuated for a while and my walk is burned, you know, again.

I know I’m one of the very lucky ones. But there was a lot of stress and challenge in those weeks. We were watching the fire maps, the fire got so close. There was just so many things. Everything got turned upside down. And there was moments of surrender, like, okay, we might possibly lose our home, we lose our area. So was stressors. And I can say in this aftermath, and I was talking with you and Skylar upstairs, there’s a lot of stillness.

Kimberly Snyder (09:23.482)
there’s a, there’s something transformed, know, fires bring death and rebirth and something really, shifted and I can’t quite put it into words, but there was this fr like this stress. then on the other side, there’s a remolding and part of that stillness. Yeah. mean, we have certain practices, right? We can practice non-attachment. We can understand cognitively.

the concept of impermanence like we just discussed. But in a situation like that, which is so acute, this is where the spiritual rubber hits the hard, unforgiving asphalt of reality. And it tests your metal. Oh yeah, well it’s one thing to be practicing in a nice, peaceful ashram. It’s another thing.

to be able to leverage that same clarity, that same ability to emotionally regulate when the fire is on your doorstep, or that you have to get your head around surrendering to perhaps an inevitable fate in which your home becomes ash. And.

You know, I evacuated twice and I think I spent one night on the hard cold floor of like one of my daughter’s friend’s houses. Yeah. I’m staring up at the ceiling and I’m thinking to myself like, who am I without all this stuff? Without my home and my clothes and my dop kit, piano, my photo books. schedule like.

I’ll lay here and I come back here and this is we eat dinner. And right. And, you know, yes, we are the lucky ones. And there is a bit of a dollop of survivor’s guilt, candidly, because I have lots of friends at S.D.U. that aren’t as fortunate as we are. But there was a kind of sense of stillness that emerged on the other side. It’s very, very hard to put your thumb on it. Oh.

Kimberly Snyder (11:39.21)
But it’s just a feeling. And that, okay, you know, we, our identities are often circumscribed by all these things. You know, I have this retreat center and I was very much surrendered to that place meeting its unfortunate fate. And it wasn’t really that much the place itself or the physical nature of the place.

It was that I forged so many profound relationships there. And that’s what I started to reflect on. I was like, yeah, like I spent plenty of time with you there. Wim Hof got me in the cold plunge there for the first time. As did I, I was there that day. I was like, man. And there’s Gabor Mate in his underwear, like puttering about or whatever.

Mark Hyman explaining the exposome to me or whatever. I’ve had these transformational experiences there. And this was the trickiest part, was sort of letting go to that container, that container for connection. Yeah. But then the connection, can be there without the… That’s right. For me, it was…

similarly to you, who am I? And it was, what are the things that really can’t be taken away? Like what’s in our hearts? Love? Just being present to whatever is. And so it’s interesting we’re having this conversation about not, or just ways in which we can so easily fall into that sort of comforting, know, it feels comforting, comfortable, just sort of.

You know, not that we would choose the fire, but some of the practices you talk about in the book, having these challenging conversations, for instance, facing things. There’s massive growth on the other side of stress or crisis, you know, provided that you have the tools, both physical and emotional tools, to be able to manage and metabolize that stress. mean, so much of health and well-being is the

Kimberly Snyder (14:01.834)
ability to move back to center, to bounce back. I mean, certainly that’s true psychologically. So we get, you know, taken off our mark and then do we have the ability to come back to equilibrium, to find our center? And physiologically, that’s generally called homeostasis. So, you know, the body has myriad adaptive mechanisms.

for fostering homeostasis. Like we have this nice little pH balance and deliver a titrate, glucose, just so. And you know, we always looking for the little warm porridge of 98.6 from a thermoregulation perspective. you you test the body, you get it nice and cold, what does it do? It thermoregulates, it heats itself back up, uses fat or carbohydrates and makes a little energy in the mitochondria to go back up to the Goldilocks zone. And you shiver, you know?

Or you get too hot and what do you do? You perspire, right? And your body thermoregulates, et cetera. you know, stress really can be an opportunity. And of course we have a very negative association with stress in our current day because modern stress is generally chronic. It’s like the, go hiking out here probably, you go on your daily walk, maybe from time to-

radically changed now with the fires, but yes. Defined a new path. But maybe from time to time, I know in my neighborhood when I walk, know, every blue moon I’ll run into a rattlesnake. yeah, I see rattlesnakes all the time. And you might be quite, some people listening to me like, bloody hell, you’re seeing rattlesnakes all the time. you you have a very adaptive response to that stress. You you see one, my God. You move away.

you know, your heart rate and your respiratory rate increase for a moment, right? Your pupils dilate, you know, blood rushes to your extremities for the purposes of fighting or fleeing. But you also become very self-obsessed. The aperture of your attention becomes very, very narrow. You don’t trust the world around you. That’s totally adaptive because it serves your biological imperative to survive. But then, you know, you look at the rattlesnake and he looks back at you and he’s like, no, Kim.

Kimberly Snyder (16:21.272)
Kimberly will not be on the specials menu today. Like I’m slithering off for a more sumptuous rituals like in the tall grasses, there he goes. What does he do? Your body then moves back to homeostasis. Your breath rate goes down, your heart rate goes down. You open back up to the world around you. You start to trust things again, right? The problem in modern society is that the rattlesnake never leaves the path for so many people.

So they’re constantly in that tense environment. And yes, there’s all these negative physiological impacts related to that, know, immune system suppression, dysbiosis in the gut, elevated blood sugar levels, all very important. But think about the other things. You become self-obsessed and you don’t trust the world. Well, isn’t that how- And that’s where we are. It felt like, or it feels like that’s how-

our culture is built around all the fear on media, social media. So you’re saying there’s this sort of chronic fear, but then how does that relate to your concept in the book of actually placing in your lifestyle these intentional stressors? Right. So that is the great irony, of course, is that if you self-impose the right dosage of stress, it actually enhances your ability to move back to the center.

So yes, that’s true for like an ice plunge or a sauna, right? The more that you push the edges of your discomfort, the better your body gets at fostering homeostasis and moving back to the warm porridge. I keep using that Goldilocks example. It’s like, don’t eat warm porridge at all. But you get what I mean. But of course, psychologically, we want to move back to a place of

I would say ventral vagal activation. That’s kind of a big fancy term, it’s sort of a Stephen Porges, polyvagal theory term. But really we want to move out of our sympathetic nervous system and back into a parasympathetic place that’s also engaged in alert where we can use our prefrontal cortex and our brilliant neomammalian brain to have like this wonderful, rational, reasonable conversation and move ourselves back to that place.

Kimberly Snyder (18:48.404)
And the more, I mean, really the opportunity, like for meditation, for example.

Any meditator will tell you that you don’t just sit there like the Buddha and have no thoughts. It’s not the cessation of thinking. It’s that when thoughts appear, you recognize them as phenomenon appearing in consciousness in that moment. And you don’t judge it. You wave at it. You say, hello, Yeah, you don’t try to resist it, that’s the worst. And there it goes, you know, out the window and you just wave at it. Bye bye. And you move back.

to your single point of focus, your breath, drishti or kasina or mantra. Your heart. Your heart. You move back to that place and that’s the great opportunity with meditation. It’s not in the cessation of thoughts, it’s in the moving back. Mm-hmm. To focus. Into that center. Yeah, into that center. And the more that you train yourself to do that,

the more it begins to punctuate the rest of your life off of a cushion, know, such that, you know, your horrible, adorable children, not yours, but like mine, let’s say, they’ll annoy me, you know? We were just with the little monkeys upstairs. Yeah, your children are angels. They’re never annoying. All these crazy boys. Yeah. But such that, you know, instead of having a knee-jerk reaction to something aggravating, no.

that ability to move back to center, to find and cultivate that space between stimulus and response, right? There’s that choice, and that choice lies our freedom, right? Wait, so could we say that if we follow, and maybe not all 10, but we choose some of the protocols in the book and we start to incorporate them into this out of our comfort zone, we realize we really are a lot more resilient than we realized.

Kimberly Snyder (20:50.304)
And so in daily life, we’re not so much in that rattlesnake all the time. Is it more that we’re in that more regulation in the nervous system that we stress ourselves and then we come back? Yeah. Would you say that’s true? I that’s totally true because it’s almost not the, I mean, Victor Franco has that famous quote, right? You know, between stimulation, response, there is a space in that space is our choice and that choice lies our liberation and our freedom. It’s actually.

That’s wonderful quote. not trying to dis-francal on your show. But it’s actually more that we have a bottom-up involuntary responses to stimulus, right? You someone says like, hey, Kimberly, you’re a total wench, you know, whatever. And then you can be like, huh, like, I don’t like that, you know? But instead of like, but then it’s after the involuntary reaction.

is that’s where you have the space and the choice, really. And you can say, you instead of like launching some vitriolic bar back at that person, you say, mm-hmm, ah, okay, you know, what was the origin of that person’s behavior? And do I even wanna engage with it? You know? Is it even about me? Yeah. Probably not. Probably not. And then, mm, do I want to actually disengage completely?

and move back and move away and create that space? Or do I actually wanna move in? This is a great sort of analogy from Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is all about managing space. It’s like the place I can really hurt you the most is about where I’m sitting right now, because I can leverage all my weight. And I never do this, so don’t get nervous. I’d leverage all my weight to like pop you right in the kisser, you know? I’d likely more kiss you than pop you in the kisser.

That would get me in trouble though. Yeah, John does jujitsu. Yeah, I know. You’ll have to excerpt this just for him. But the way that essentially we can protect ourselves is to create space. So it’d be like, I’m going to move away. And I can’t hit you because you’re too far away. That’s disengaging. the other way though is you can move in. Give me like a nice bear hug. Not that that’s what I’m going for, but.

Kimberly Snyder (23:16.224)
if you chose to do that, and what would I be able to do? I’d be able to tap you on the back. I can’t hit you because I can’t leverage. And this is a analogy for how we can approach relationships. know, sometimes someone might betray you or insult you or neglect you, et cetera, and you’re hurt and you can move away and disengage as a means of protecting yourself. But the other way is actually to move in.

and actually confront that stress by leaning in and having, you what I call stressful conversations. Like into the ice bath of a hard, thorny conversation. Well, I love that your protocols aren’t just, you know, physical, but there’s this emotional well-being, which of course can influence so much of our inflammation and our hormonal states.

So would you say someone like me, for example, we’ve talked about this, where part of my work, I do have to be in groups. I tend to be more of a, just like a lot of alone time, I would say I’m more of an introvert. But there’s, okay, I say to myself, okay, it’s really good for me to go to this dinner. It’s really good for me to go to this event. And sometimes it is, right? It generally is. I mean, I think when we push ourselves out of our comfort zone, even if it’s just as simple as like the comfort zone of

like spending a night at home in our living room. And we go out and we’re like, I don’t wanna do this, that dinner, with those guys. All the driving. and all the driving. But almost every time we come back, we’re like, I’m so glad I pushed myself and we did that, because I had that beautiful connection, right? Yeah. And I mean, this is a very banal.

example of how just pushing yourself slightly out of your comfort zone yields generally very, very good results. But I think, you know, oftentimes with people that we really have an issue with, you know, and that could be just a stranger, but even more importantly, like a family member, a relative, right? Where we will choose to avoid.

Kimberly Snyder (25:34.602)
a hard conversation because it just feels too awkward, right? We just don’t do it. But the possibility that lies on the other side of these stressful conversations is just life-changing. Really, it is oftentimes these stressful, hard conversations that separate our human condition from the world that our hearts know and imagine is possible.

and it’s to push through that discomfort. And there’s actual real techniques for being able to do that. like a lot of people listening to this may say, well, that sounds great, but I can’t imagine actually confronting this person and they fear. So how do you address that? Sure. Well, you have to do a lot of self work first because you need to be emotionally regulated yourself.

to move into one of those difficult thorny conversations. Right. If you’re in a, if you’re a dysregulated state, that’s not the time to broach the subject. No way. So you have to bone up on all of your different practices. That could be breath work. It could be meditation, but it also could be physiological practices. I mean, I found that fasting and cold water therapy, the most potent benefits of those things were actually emotional and not physical. How often do you fast?

Well, I do just like the 16, eight thing every day. Okay, every day you’re doing that? Yeah. Okay. And that’s not very stressful for me anymore. But when I first started, it was difficult. even now, just because I consolidate my food and my consumption of food in an eight hour window, doesn’t mean I don’t like have a hankering for a Snickers at 9 p.m.

I’m not really a snickers, but you know what mean? It doesn’t mean that I don’t get hungry outside of the window. There’s a stressor that you’re feeling. But because I’ve become a disciple to that practice, I have to witness the nature of the hunger and not just mindlessly wander up to your cupboard and grab a protein bar. I can’t do that because I’m a disciple to this practice. And so I have to witness the nature of the stimulus, the hunger in this case.

Kimberly Snyder (27:53.678)
And instead of just having a reactive response, like I’m gonna go raid Kim’s fridge again. What time do you start eating? Like I’m like a 10 to six guy, more or less. Oh, because you were upstairs all yourself while I was down here doing another podcast. Did you think about going in the kitchen and folding your eyes? me a nice banana before I started. And I brought you some crackers. Oh, yeah. I thought about that that would be mean to rescind my own gift.

You ate the crackers. You’re like, here you go. Now while you’re down there with my wife, I’m gonna eat them. No, so like, let’s say I get hungry outside of my eating window, right? I have to witness the nature of that hunger and not just mindlessly eat. And then I have to kind of untangle, is this a biological need that I’m feeling right now? Or is this an emotional desire? And because I’m that- I love that. That-

that witnessing is forced upon me through this practice, I had to be like, the provenance of this particular hunger is almost always psychological. I’m bored, I’m tired, someone insulted me, things didn’t go so I’m eating my feelings, right? And this is the trap door of modernity is that so many of us are.

emotionally dysregulated, and then guess what? We just have a surfeit of calories available to us at kind of in the palm of our hand. That to me is one of the primary reasons that we have such a massive obesity problem. It’s that it’s the mix of emotional dysregulation often caused through over consumption of media, candidly. Yes. With the ever availability of nutrient deficient

shelf stable shitty calories. That mix is deadly. And so that’s why I think a fasting protocol can be an amazing psychological tool. Like let’s just say also like ice plunging. I’m not gonna go into all of the different attributes of ice plunging, but when you get into an ice bath, you have an involuntary bottom up response. Right, it’s cold, you know.

Kimberly Snyder (30:15.786)
epinephrine coursing through your veins. I feel it right here in my little neck, my carotid artery. I start to feel a sense of panic. And then you develop the capacity through breath and through top-down pressure to manage that bottom-up stress response. You can actually apply that same skill to having a stressful conversation. Someone says something that you really disagree with politically or someone attacks you for something.

And boy, it feels like jolt of epinephrine coming up your body. And then you’re like, no, I know how to manage that. So with stressful conversations, before you even really imagine it, you have to work on yourself, right? Because you need to go into that emotionally regulated and also create a set and setting of safety and trust.

for your counterpart. And this goes so into much of your work around heart coherence, right? Because if you’re there in that regulated space, you’re allowing for this possibility of attunement between you and your adversary, if you will. And you’re creating that place of calmness and serenity.

such that it’s viral in nature. So that’s the first thing, create that set and setting, work on yourself, create that set and setting, and then really listen to understand, fully just listen to understand and not to respond. Well, that’s a big skill for a lot of people to develop because that’s not how most people listen.

No, in fact. Well, you can have the intention when you read about this in the book and it says that, okay, empty myself here. Listen, the whole body is Marshall Rosen, Thal. Berg. Rosenberg, sorry, nonviolent communication. Right. Right, like your whole body is listening. Yeah, and you can even assume a posture of that. And like even in this conversation, it’s so fun and lively.

Kimberly Snyder (32:42.072)
that I’m thinking about rebuttals and rejoiners and clever things to say while you’re still talking. You haven’t even finished what you’re saying and I’m already like, Kimberly, ding, ding, ding. That’s not necessarily a bad impulse, but when you’re having a more serious, stressful conversation, you really wanna be in a place of relaxation, full listening mode. Because when you’re in full listen mode, your counterpart really feels

seen and heard. Yeah, it’s true. And then… Which is really what we all want. That’s all right. Because I had, you know, I chronicle some of this in the book, but I had 26 hour long Zoom calls with people that disagreed with me. So this is how I kind of trained for this. Who are these people?

was a massive pool to choose from, let’s just say. was it people like writing the articles or social media? Exactly. So I was writing this article, Commusings. yeah. Yeah. And in 2020, when I started, right when we, you know, anchored into port lockdown, you know, I was writing these 1500, 2000 word essays as a means to sort of provide little like buoys of hope.

to navigate the rough seas of COVID, whatever. But people were alone and scared. And I was like, okay, I’m gonna write these stories and really rigorously researched essays and try to kind of cultivate. I couldn’t believe you had time to write all that. I mean, I was reading them. I still read them. I was a lot. mean, it’s just, the amount of time it takes to write that and edit it. I know. Well, Jake helps me with editing. Takes all my best stuff and puts it on the cutting room floor.

He doesn’t like to adulate my ego enough. But so I was connecting my personal email to those missives. And I was I mean, after like three or four weeks, I was like, my God, what have I gotten myself into? I’m over a literary barrel. then 2020 giveth in terms of literary fodder. Right. You know, it was like Covid. And then it was.

Kimberly Snyder (34:59.554)
the reckoning around racial justice and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. And then it was like Trumpistan and then it was the rise of QAnon and then it was the election. And I was really trying to take on all of these very incendiary topics, but through sort of like a thoughtful, mindful lens. But this was a time where people were so triggerable that of course over 2000 words, know, bound to insult someone or.

There’d be a turn of phrase that didn’t sit right with someone. And so I would send them out on Sunday. Monday morning, it’s like the deluge of a program coming into my inbox. Like, you know, like hundreds of emails. Hundreds? Well, I would get like five or six hundred, because the list was 1.2 million. Wow. So I would get five or six hundred emails. But like most of them, like encouraging, grateful, but then like a hundred a week that were like critical.

some form of like recrimination, know, that people that felt offended. And some of them, there was like really quite nothing to do with them because they were just filled with expletives. I’m just like, okay, well, I’ll that Like opening yourself up to that, Jeff, did you, I mean, that’s- Well, it was hard because, you know- it in. Yeah, because in my life, across my life, I’ve been a massive people pleaser. Right. You know, and so at the beginning, I took this-

very, very personally, I was very, very defensive, kind of oddly, kind of very similarly to how you build your physiological immune system through some exposure to quote unquote insult, like pathogens, like virus and bacteria, I actually built my psychological immune system through the right dosage of insults. I have never heard it described that way. It was cool.

That is amazing. mean, I’m not trying to justify or, you know, sanitize like racism and neglect and abuse. You know, I’m not trying to sanitize that at all. But for me, you know, I was just getting mean emails, you know, and that really built my psychological immune system such that like I was just no longer impacted by them. In fact, I saw them.

Kimberly Snyder (37:23.904)
as an opportunity. So I started to reach back out to these people. How long did the process take from taking it personally to building this so-called immunity up? Yeah, not that long. It was like a few months. I mean, that’s why I categorize it as very similar to getting into an ice bath. It’s the same way that you build up a certain tolerance. people leave hateful comments on your YouTube channel. This is nothing. Yeah, I mean.

You know, it’s very stoic that way. Like the best way to disarm an insult is to be unaffected by it. And then what are they gonna do? They’re just gonna be yelling into the wind, you know. Because you know your intention, so it just. Yeah. And it’s not like I don’t have some little reaction here and there, but I used to like stay up all night, brooding over some rebuttal, holding the ember of resentment, waiting for the right time to throw it, you know? But then, you know, of course the moral there is who’s getting.

You know, you are, you’re holding the ember. So I started to really look forward to these contentious emails. Come on, look forward to it. I would actually glaze over the good ones. Oh my gosh. And I would be like, oh, who’s going to, you know, whatever. And then I would I’d email them back and, know, the more thoughtful ones, I would email them back and I’d be like, oh, and then would there be a little volley? That sounded very British there for a second. A little volley.

And then I pulled, sometimes I call this my David Copperfield routine, because I’d be like, well, let’s jump on a Zoom then and talk about it. And I call it that because at that point I made most people disappear. That’s why it was my David Copperfield routine. but like, yeah, they’d be like, where’d you go? I saw the lady in half. But 26 people took me up on it.

And so I scheduled in August and September of 2020, 26 hour long Zoom calls on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. And I just leaned into it. And I learned a tremendous amount. Did most of them neutralize after these techniques that you share about in the book? Yeah, all of them. All of them, 100%. 100%. They all took on a very, very, very similar pattern, It’s really interesting.

Kimberly Snyder (39:45.806)
So we were all just kind of getting used to Zoom at that juncture. Now we’re like fluent. But at that point there would be like a lot of like jabbing at buttons. You’d be like, Like am I muted here? Yeah, you’re still unmuted. Oh my God. But then, so that was sort of like an icebreaker and then we’d get on and there’d be sort of an exchange of pleasantries. Oh, thanks for having me. And then they would just.

Gish Gallop their whole entire life at me for 45 minutes. And then unrelated to the conversation. Yeah. Oh, my dog is sick You could just see how people are, there’s this, they just wanna, there’s this projecting out. I just wanna And give them this window with the email there, wow. Yeah, was just like. Wow. And Over and over again. Same pattern every time. They just wanna be seen. yeah, my dad died last year and my car’s in the shop and my dog’s like. you say anything or would you just listen?

Wow. Until they were done. Until they were done, until they had exhausted themselves. And obviously I got better at it. Did this exhaust you? It did, but you know, whatever, I was there. I committed the time. So what I did, what I started getting really good at was during this listening, this active listening, was notating little parts of their life where they converged with mine. Wow.

I was born in Chicago, too. like I’m a dad of three daughters, whatever it happened to be. I’d make little notes. And then when they were done, I’d leave a little space. That’s another little technique. Leave a space between someone finishing their thought and you beginning because that space indicates that you fully listened to them. Then you’ve synthesized your response instead of synthesizing your response while they were talking. Exactly. It’s a little technique.

I learned that one in Japan, that’s a whole other thing. It’s a very beautiful custom of the Japanese. So if you’re ever- Secret pause. Totally, so if you’re ever in Japan on business and you’re pitching something and there’s a pregnant silence after, don’t worry about it, that’s actually a sign of respect. It’s a good one. So then after a little pause.

Kimberly Snyder (42:01.858)
I’d be like, you know, it’s so interesting. You know, I was also born in Chicago and my grandparents lived there, not that far from where did yours live? And like, I would find areas of convergence between my life and their life. And this is another principle of this method, which is seek connection, not solution. Seek connection, not solution. Because the people that I was speaking with were

They were from all over the political spectrum. Many, many people on the right, like far right, but also people on the far left that like, it was not an appropriate moment for a white man to be centering himself at this juncture in history or whatever. Whatever there was, some, you know. So there was these issues that had set the table for these conversations, but most of the time,

we never even touched the issues that had originally put us at loggerheads. We just found connection. And then it just sort of… It just sort of like dissolved. It wasn’t even, it didn’t even come up. Many times it didn’t. Sometimes it did. But really what I found is that through those techniques, through creating safe set and setting, through listening to understand and not to respond,

through leaving space for seeking connection and not solution. By the end, I had built this like entire Rolodex of like frenemies, you know? And I still actually have a couple that text me, you know, like very, very serious Trumpers, you know, that like, but the whole tenor of our relationship has changed and it’s like playful and funny and we kind of jab each other a little and they send me funny videos. And you know, we found a…

deep human connection that transcended the differences. And what I took away was if I could have these stressful conversations with people that I didn’t even know, could I not have them with the people that are most important to me in my life? You know, my parents who are in their mid 80s, you know?

Kimberly Snyder (44:24.654)
to actually lean in and have that conversation while they’re still here. Or with my parents, yeah. Let me ask you a question. someone’s listening, I’m listening to this saying, well, some of these stressful conversations, you are looking for a solution, right? I think if I’m having a conversation with my husband, John. And one of the things was sharing this with Skylar, there’s sort of this ongoing pattern where I would say a need, like, hey, you know, I need you to be great.

for you to be off your phone and join us in the Monopoly game, or it would be really great if you would please hang up your towel. You know, it’s like daily life, right? And you always took it as, always a response was, you always criticize me. There’s so many interactions where you criticize me over and over. So I had to this conversation where it was like, I’m really not trying to criticize you, but I’m having these needs. And so, you know, it was just kind of,

kind of came up and also through my observation, other dynamics that he was criticized quite a lot or preceded in his childhood, right? But then there was this solution that had to be like the way I frame things and being aware. So with your steps, there’s this connection point, but what do we do when we’re trying to create a more harmonious pattern or something needs to shift or change at work or with a relative?

Well, I think your approach is spot on in terms of needs is actually being able to really be clear in articulating your needs and really understand them well yourself. Right. It’s not really like, I want you so badly to play Monopoly because I hate being the hat or whatever. It’s really like, I love you and I want to be with you in

around our children and not something to report. They really want to spend quality time with you. so sometimes it’s like about really getting clear on how to articulate those needs. Yeah. And then managing your own expectations too, where it’s like you’re not going to solve all the world’s problems in one conversation. Reciprocity.

Kimberly Snyder (46:50.83)
You know, this kind of thing requires reciprocity. Like forgiveness in many ways, for example, can be done monodirectionally. You know, you can forgive someone that’s sometimes a gift that you give yourself because you’re cleansing yourself of toxicity, et cetera. But- That charge, that’s always- Yeah, but like coming to terms around something requires reciprocity. It’s a dance, it requires two people. So you have to, A, I think-

All the steps that I just messaged do set the table for that because it’s calm, people feel heard and seen, you’re clear, you help them be clear. One of the other tools that I often use is a tool called steel manning, which comes from straw manning. So a straw man argument, you we often see this on social media around politics, but certainly it’s

applicable in the home too, where you might distort someone’s position through either hurling an insult at them, some sort of ad hominem, or sort of changing really what they say and disregarding the actual thing that they say. Like for example, if I was like, Kimberly, I really think that we should invest more money in renewable energy. And you’d be like, you just wanna put everyone in oil and gas out of business.

I’m like, no, that’s not you. So that’s a straw man argument because it’s easy to knock down a straw man. Very hard to knock down a steel man. So what steel manning is, is also a conversational technique where you actually listen thoroughly to someone else’s opinion. And then instead of offering a rebuttal, you reiterate the best parts of their opinion back to them. So you say, Hey, John,

Sorry to keep on the monopoly thing, but I really would like you to spend some time with the family tonight You know in this we’re playing this game. This is great, and then he might say Well, I would like to but I’m at this inflection point with this one particular client and I really just need to be present for that person and then instead of being like But John you know whatever you’d be like. I know that that client is really really important

Kimberly Snyder (49:15.118)
and I respect your need to be on that, to be ready and available for that person. So what you’re doing is sort of reflecting back the best parts of his position. So you really understand. And then he feels more seen and heard. And then maybe like, okay, there’s some form of little happy medium that happens. And I find it to be really…

effective because often what that approach does is it gets to the issue behind the issue. Cause oftentimes we’re actually just like sparring on the surface of things where, know, it’s like, look oftentimes at like political disagreements, like, you know, right now, this is such a big one about immigration, right? And there’s like one side that’s like, well, you know,

We’re all immigrants and we have a statue in the harbor that says, bring us your perhuddle masses and like, know, whatever we’re, we’re America. We have a promise of its dream to all these people. And then there’s other people that are like, well, they’re coming in and you know, they’re criminals and stealing our jobs and they’re stealing our livelihood or whatever. And that’s like back and forth. And everyone’s kind of looking down their nose at everybody else.

But if you can kind of get, apply some of these principles and then get to the issue behind the issue of like, and you might come to this place where you say, my God, what are the ground conditions in Guatemala, let’s say, that would compel someone to leave their home where they probably have all their family, where they have all of their roots, to walk.

to a country that doesn’t want them, that speaks a different language. And then you’re sort of like, there’s real compassion in humanity to be found there. I’m like, my God, yeah. There is something deeper behind this argument. And can we kind of coalesce around that in some ways to find a more humane and compassionate middle ground? So powerful.

Kimberly Snyder (51:31.046)
I feel like you were built, you were born to help bring this. I mean, there’s so much depth in the book, even when we’re talking about talking about all the different categories. And what I love about it is, know, you’re talking like, again, looking through the different chapters in the book here, if you’re watching this on our YouTube channel, lot of you are listening to me rifle to the book here, but some of them are very tangible.

which I think can be a pathway in for people who are talking about light therapy or heat therapy. And then it’s sort of like, for me, I went straight to the difficult conversations chapter and you can bounce around in the book and you can, but there’s things talking about stress plants, there’s aspects of eating and it touches the holistic lifestyle, which I think is really honoring the whole person. And one of the strengths in this book where so many wellness books compartmentalize.

and get really specific. This is, feels really like it, I don’t know, it’s, breathes of life. Yeah. Well. So congratulations on something that’s very accessible, but it’s, you know, it’s, it feels like it, speaks to a, a real person. Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, it is very much based in my own.

and the product of my own experience. And all of the treacherous obstacles I’ve had to confront in my own life, both from a bio-psycho-social perspective, spiritual perspective too. at the end, we’ve sort of confused this idea of ease. We do really actually want to live with ease, but we don’t really want the…

72 degrees on the couch, binging Netflix with a pint of hubby, chubby, hubby, whatever. You know, that’s a lovely, delicious way to live every once in a while, and there’s nothing wrong with kind of indulging your senses. But that’s not really the life we truly want. We want that life of ease where we know it, like when we taste it. It’s like, you’ve probably gone to…

Kimberly Snyder (53:56.15)
in your life to like buy a ethylene gassed tomato at a grocery store? Like you can taste it. It tastes awful. But what about the one that you grew yourself in your own backyard garden that required all of that work and tending and composting and making the soil rich and nutritious and planting the seed and watering it every day and pruning the plant just right. I you taste that tomato and it’s like bursting and

and efflorescent, I mean, that’s what you really want. That’s the true life that we want. And it doesn’t come for free. mean, we know, you know, like, just take what we’re doing right now, this sort of collective enterprise that we’re having right now, this feeling of dance and connection that we’re having, like, and it’s deeply creative. I mean, it is a, it’s a sense of flow.

that we often tap into for little moments at a time when we are in collective enterprise or doing something creative or when we’re playing sports and we have perfect awareness of our body and space and time, we feel that sense of flow state. That’s the true ease that we’re looking for in life. That’s the true ease. And it does often require a tremendous amount of

practice and a little bit of discomfort to access that true ease. So that’s kind of, you know, where I’m trying to really get at the kernel of what I’m trying to get at. You know, it’s like how do we truly live with ease and candidly die with it too. Well, it’s very Tao, isn’t it? That do nothing, you’re not really doing anything when we’re in our center and we’re sort of being guided moment to moment in that actual presence.

And when we’re taken out of the comfort zone, we are really present when you’re in that cold plunge or when you’re in that uncomfortable conversation or following the fire in your neighborhood, right? It’s this direct presence that comes in more and more. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s probably most potent in contemplating our own mortality or the mortality of the people that we love.

Kimberly Snyder (56:20.194)
And that’s really kind of, I end the book really talking about the nature of death and becoming comfortable with the ultimate stressor. Our our demise, our inevitable demise and reframing our relationship with that. yeah, so that’s of course, perhaps like the ultimate target of the spiritual life is freedom from that ultimate stressor, the fear of death.

And you know, it’s like forgiveness and other things. It starts sometimes cognitively, but it has to end here. It has to end where you truly feel it. And I’m sort of here in my head with it right now of like, okay, yeah, I am nature. You know, I am this unbelievable product of atoms that were forged in the

of some supernova eight billion years ago that have self-assembled into this little organism in the here and now called Jeff. Yeah, I am like literally the universe experiencing itself in my organism here and now. And I’ve become animated here for a certain period of time. And my life as I know it will be rounded by a great sleep. And I will return all of my…

hydrogen and carbon and phosphorus and nitrogen, you know, back to the soil. I mean, I’ve extracted so much. It’s the only polite thing to do really, right? And I’m okay with that, you know. Ease of heart. I’m okay with that, you know, cognitively. But I’m, but to really truly feel it is sort of the next step to really surrender into that.

And this is why we are process. We’re not product. And I’m along, I’m in that process now. So beautiful and so potent. Your writing really comes from your heart, Jeff, and it’s so well written and I love how readable it is. And I also wanna share with everyone that it is a book and I like these books, which was not my book, which was sequential to the heart stages, but you can jump to.

Kimberly Snyder (58:42.86)
certain chapters, it’s, know, to an extent you can guide the book yourself. So thank you so much. You and I could just chat on and on. I’m sure let’s have a part four or five at some point. Until you kick me out of the guest room. You’re out of here, man. So it comes out this week. Tell us again where we can find the book. Yeah. books are sold. like to say. Wherever books are sold. I scooped up the old URL, goodstress.com.

Did you? Yeah, look at me. Okay. So you can go to goodstress.com and if you get it there, you get all sorts of bonus goodies with it. You know, I can throw in all this sumptuous coursework from the Commune platform with some of my heroes that I feature there. Beautiful. So yeah, goodstress.com and you know, come and check out our broader Commune universe. Yes. Kimberly’s on there, of course, and you know, so many brilliant folks that have…

spent the arc of my whole life. In fact, my work is really a distillation of all those people’s work. And so that’s at onecommun.com, O-N-E commun.com. And you can listen to me wax alternately poetic and pathetic on the gram at Jeff Groszno. Yeah. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Jeff. Your big heart, being always funny and humble and, you know, just.

the brilliant lens through which you make this really, just, you know, I say this word again, accessible, but that’s really what it is. You can apply this to our life. It’s practical. It’s simple. I really enjoyed the book. And as long as I’ve been in wellness, I learned a lot as well. So good stress, everybody. Thank you so much, Jeff, for being with us. I love you so much. I appreciate you as a friend, like a really deep.

soul friend. Thanks for supporting me. I appreciate it. Thank you. And thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in. We’ll put those direct links to One Commune and the book Good Stress as well in our show notes at mysaloonah.com. And as always, we will be back here Thursday for our next Q &A show. Remember, at mysaloonah.com, there’s a section you can ask me questions to have them answered on a future episode. Till next time, take great care. I’ll see you on social. I’ll see you on our newsletter.

Kimberly Snyder (01:01:10.422)
and sending you much love.