Back by popular demand – Dr. Regedanz shares important tips for managing holiday stress!

Krista Regedanz, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist who works with high achievers and other Type A clients in private practice in Palo Alto, California. She is the founder and director of Palo Alto Smart Therapy.

Seventeen years ago, Dr. Regedanz was a technology and strategy consultant at a data warehousing and business strategy firm based in Chicago and Boston working with knowledge management and strategy.

Podcast Transcript:

Bobbie LaPorte: Hello everyone and welcome. I’m Bobbie LaPorte of Bobbie LaPorte and Associates and host of Executive Aid Station. In today’s competitive and dynamic executive workplace, we believe that leadership is an endurance event and we are here to help.

Our show guests are executives who have successfully achieved a balanced life as well as experts in fitness, health, and wellness and personal leadership who shift strategies for living and leading mindfully.

Today, my guest is once again, Dr. Krista Regadanz. Krista is a clinical psychologist who works with high achievers and other type-A clients in private practice in Palo Alto, California. She is the founder and director of Palo Alto Smart Therapy, which she founded in response to the need for smart, resourceful, and strong professionals to find psychotherapy in the demanding and often stressful environment of Silicon Valley.

As Krista says, we work with people who have it all on paper. They want to have it all inside themselves and in their relationships too. Krista has been a popular guest on Executive Aid Station and she’s back today, providing tips for managing stress as we approach the holiday season. You can listen to her previous popular visits to Executive Aid Station at our website, www.bobbielaporte.com.

So Krista, welcome back to the executive aid stations.

Krista Regedanz: Thanks, Bobbie. It’s great to be back.

Bobbie LaPorte: So your previous Executive Aid Station episode on stress management and job burnout was the most popular one in our program to date. And I think that says a lot about how today’s leaders are feeling with all the demands on them, both personally and professionally.

In that episode, you shared the three symptoms of stress and how being tuned into your body can deal with stress. So as we head into the holiday season now, which we know can bring even more stress to our lives, what advice do you have for our audience on how to get ahead of it during this really challenging time of year?

Krista Regedanz: That’s a great question. I think there are a couple of things. I know what I am, and I’m having my clients, pay attention to this year. Those things are, to look at what happened in the last couple of years around the holidays, around the end of the year, which can be such a busy time, to see what they like, and what they didn’t like about their experience, so we can get a handle on what you’re going for.

Things like, do you want more of a sense of connection with other people? Does that connection involve a shared spiritual or religious connection or is it really a sense of community that you’re looking for?

Do you want to relive past events? Did you have a really good New Year’s Eve one time and you’re just trying to recreate it or do you just want to celebrate life and have fun? So those are the kind of things to think about. What is it that you want your experience to be, and then what has it been like when it hasn’t gone that way?

So to kind of get information about what’s important and what’s not; and how do you miss the mark when you’re trying to go toward a certain experience? And then I have folks do experiments about that. So would it be better to be with these people or with these people? And that kind of involves both getting the information of how it’s been in the past, but also setting up experiments for, “okay, well, how else can I do this?” and being imaginative about it.

And I think another piece of experimentation is setting up a kind of an optimal energy level for being able to achieve those experiences. For instance, really getting back to basics with exercise and sleep.

Another one is looking at distractions. So, I noticed the other day, I was sitting around and it was a Saturday morning and I looked at the news, which is what I often do on my cell phone, and two hours went by and I was still looking at news and it wasn’t like it was life-changing news or anything. I don’t have two hours on a Saturday to mess around like that.

So I made an agreement with myself. I did this experiment, that every time I go back to the news, I’m going to do 10 really good pushups; ones that are going to make me warm and sweat. So I set up this experiment and I’m looking at the news a lot less. I’m getting all the news I need somehow, but I’m not on my phone and I’m getting some pretty good results from that.

So, you know, doing that with not just things such as news, but for some people, it’s social media or with playing games. So setting up the optimal situations for those overarching experiments of, “what do I actually want to experience at this time of the year?”

Bobbie LaPorte: Right. How should you actually be spending the limited amount of time that you have, right?

Krista Regedanz: Yeah, exactly. And then to get more nuanced about it, how do I want to set it up so I can actually have those experiences I want? You know, if I want to go to a great New Year’s Eve party and I define great as to have a lot of fun, then I can’t show up, not exercising all that week and not sleeping very well and have the level of fun I want to have.

Bobbie LaPorte: Right. So planning to optimize the experiences that you’ve identified as being really important to you. And how do you guide your clients this time of year to not put so much pressure on themselves? Because it’s the holidays, we think, Oh, I have to go to this party. I have to buy this gift. I have to be the hostess. I have to make sure everybody’s happy, we just feel like we have all these additional challenges and pressures. And a lot of it is self-imposed right? I mean, nobody’s saying, “Oh, you just have to have this perfect party.”

Krista Regedanz: Yeah, but it feels so pressured. Self-imposed. So one of the things that both I recommend and that I do myself is getting those intentions; what do I want, what do I not want? And then to be asking ourselves, “right now, in this moment, what’s my job?” If I’ve committed to having a holiday experience with a lot of connection with people, then what’s my job?

My job is not to manage other people. My job is to set up conditions however I’ve decided to set those up. Or maybe my job is to take care of myself so that I can be able to connect with other people and not be irritable that day.

Bobbie LaPorte: Great. That’s super helpful. I’m sure it’ll be helpful to our listeners as well. As always, your insight and guidance, as well as your personal experience with the advice that you give to others, is really helpful. So, thank you again for sharing that with us.

Krista Regedanz: Oh, it’s a pleasure.

And for those of you who are listening, that’s it for today’s show, please visit our website, www.bobbielaporte.com and sign up for our Executive Aid Station updates.

I look forward to sharing our next episode of the Executive Aid Station with you soon. So stay tuned.