David Ko
Appearances
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It's like just power through the moment. CEO of Calm. Author of Recharge. David Code. Good stress could lead to resilience. You're never really going to have a stress-free work environment. Not everything has to be 24-7, 365, because at some point you've caused a lot of bad stress.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Take your car analogy. So when you had your car and you were at 30%, you were probably with someone, but in the back of your mind, you're going, how am I going to get home? Where am I going to charge? And you could do this probably better than most, but you still want to be present for that individual that you're with or your friends that you're with in those conversations.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And what I find is sometimes we as leaders have to make the space. Sometimes we as leaders have to show something that you do absolutely brilliantly is to show a vulnerable side to them and talk about our own stories. I find that many CEOs today aren't vulnerable. I, for one, was not very good at being vulnerable.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
When I wrote the book, though, I was just taken back at how many people who I met for the first time were so open and honest and vulnerable with myself. And it got me thinking, well, if they can do it, why can't I do it?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And if I started to show some of that vulnerability at work, if I started to give a little bit of space and more time for that conversation, would that then make it just more open for others and more safe for others to have the conversation? Because if I'm not having that conversation and saying, here's my own journey, then they may feel that it's not okay for them to open up as well, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I'd just be curious, like you as CEO, right? I mean, you've got all these different businesses. How do you do that with your own employees?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
That's a real kind of indicator for you to say, I need to really kind of take a hard stop and figure out how I recharge.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
So good. So true. Right? That's so true. There's a spectrum of stress.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
In the book, actually, I interviewed Dr. Aditi Noorakar. And you met her. Yeah, she's wonderful. Fantastic, right? And we got into this whole conversation of good stress, bad stress. Use stress, good stress versus bad stress, distress. And we talked about how good stress could lead to resilience. It could lead to growth. It actually could lead to a stronger culture.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
you're never really going to have a stress-free work environment. Agreed. We're always going to have stress at work. We're all going to have deadlines. We're all going to have things we're going to want to hit. But not everything has to be, just like you said, 24-7, 365. Because at some point, it's going to stack so much that you as a leader are realizing you're probably not being very efficient.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Your employees are probably not working super efficiently, not working well together. And they're probably, you've caused a lot of bad stress, distress in their life. That's leading to things like anxiety, depression, and then starts to lead to physical ailments. Because we know there's a linkage between your mental health and your physical health.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And so that becomes a very vicious cycle, especially in the workplace. And that leads to a lot of unproductivity. What I found with the two is you really have to find that right balance and understand there will be, and just talk about it. There's a push. We're all going to make a push. We did it recently as a company at Calm around the elections.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And we treated the elections like our Super Bowl moment because we knew and we saw the data that people's stress was rising every day as that day, November 5, got closer and closer. We saw it in the App Store. We saw it in comments. We saw it on social. So we really came together as a company to do different types of things around that. Take a breath, 30 seconds or 15 seconds of silence.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
We showed animals from the San Diego Zoo on Instagram. And we got so many people commenting that day that said, hey, thank you for the silence. Thank you for my 15 seconds in this world where so many things are happening. Now, people were dialing in from work because they were stressed at work. Stress doesn't just mean it's at home.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It was like people were like during the elections coming in from work. And so we wanted to give them a little bit so they had a release so they could be more productive. So there's a lot of things around stuff that I look at for good stress and bad stress and recognize there's always going to be a push-pull. But that's the part where you can't do it alone. You got to have a good team.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You got to talk about it. You do this so well. and make sure that becomes part of your fabric, your culture, your DNA. And I think it's shifting, but it's slow. I think the conversation around mental health in everyday life It's the most approachable it's ever been, right? I talk about things with my own kids today around mental health.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
When I was a child coming, I'd be curious for you, like immigrant family, we didn't talk about our mental health in my household, right? We talked more about powering through things. And I can talk about that later, but we didn't really talk about it. My kids talk about it. They may overuse it at times, not use it the right way. It's okay. They're having the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Their friends are having the conversation. I think that's great. But when you go to the workplace, it kind of stops. And I go to so many places and I'm like, do you talk about your mental health at work? And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, let's change that dialogue. Let's make it as approachable as it is in everyday life. And how do we start to do that?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Let's give you the tools and we'll start at the top. Yeah, you're so right.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And be transparent in that journey. You know, I speak to many CEOs in the Valley and over the world. And, you know, a lot of times I'll ask them, how do you prioritize things with your employees? How transparent are you? And I'll tell you, many of them are not that transparent. Or they'll be like, these are the most important things. And then they'll add five more and then five more, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I'll be like, oh, okay. What did you take away? And they're like, what are you talking about? I mean, what did you take away? And they're like, nothing. And I'm like, well, how do you think that's affecting your employees? And they're like, I never really thought about that. So I've just compounded and stacked the problem as a leader and And you didn't take anything away.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And it cascades down like a megaphone. Think about what that employee is going through and walk in their shoes for a minute. We at the top have the luxury of having more control over our schedules. but that person may not have as much control over their schedule. They're just ticking through things.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And if you just keep adding and not taking certain things away and saying, this is important, this isn't important, here's how I think about it, here's how I'm being transparent, you're adding more stress to your company.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It was interesting for me, my first day at Comm. I walk in and they're Michael and Alex, who you know well, the founders, right? Yeah, I love them. And they love you and they talk about you all the time and how you all first met. And they introduced me to the company. Warm, welcome, so inviting. And they started the whole All Hands Off with a meditation. And I wasn't really used to that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I was kind of sitting there and I kind of noticed everyone. And normally we listen to someone like yourself. We'll turn you on or we'll turn one of our other kind of narrators on. They do great. And everyone just kind of sat there in the moment. And whether it was sometimes it's really quick, 30 seconds, sometimes it's five, six minutes, sometimes three minutes.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And they listened and it was, and I kind of was peeking at times looking, I'm like, is everyone kind of closing their eyes, you know, around here, you know, looking there. And they were just in the moment. It was a moment for me that showed me how much they cared. And I was like, wow, this company cares. This isn't forced. You don't have to be here. You don't have to do this.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And they were there and they were present and they were in the moment. So that's like some of this, that was one of the ways I knew this company was going to be different. And then I watched as the company did things around gratitude, where we end every all hands with gratitude. We read things that have come into us and it's a reminder of the impact we're having.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I think that's why sometimes I'm so stressed because I feel this weight of responsibility where every second of every day, someone is using the product. And I just feel like if we're not answering them, We're not helping them in the moment. Someone's not getting something that they need. And I feel that stress. And I feel the response. It's really responsibility.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I talk about that with the employees. And I think it's really important to talk about that. So we do the gratitude piece at the end. We have Zoom-free days where I talk to employees about, hey, if you're in a moment where you find yourself in five Zooms, take a beat. You don't need to do that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And if there's meetings that don't make sense, just like you did tonight, which was great, just say, no, it's okay. We'll figure it out. And I do that too. And I try to be a lot more purposeful now because it helps me then be more present in the meetings that I need to be in. And rather than saying, it's not the quantity of meetings that I'm in, it's those quality of meeting moments that I'm in.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I think people sometimes... like misinterpret like quantity for productivity versus like value. And I'm much more like, okay, I'm going to do, I'm going to focus on quality and it may mean less. And that doesn't have to sacrifice my impact.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah, yeah. So I had two people in particular. So John Sculley, for example, the former CEO of Apple. he talked about how in the book he was chief listening officer. And I was like, really? And he's like, yeah. Like Steve asked that we make our own business cards and I wrote chief listening officer. And I sat there and I was like, wow, that was great. You listen.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And so, cause so often, you just start talking, right? And he's like, no, I became a lot more purposeful if I just listened first, said probably less, but that impact was greater because I heard what was happening. And I thought that was great. I had Jack Rowe, who was a former CEO of Aetna in the book, he came over and he said, sometimes you have to put yourself into neutral.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And he's like, and you have to give yourself space because you can't run at a hundred miles an hour. And if you don't give yourself a little bit of a break, no matter what position you're in, you're going to find yourself upside down and you're not going to figure out how to turn back up.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I appreciated those conversations with them because they're a little bit more old school in their approach. They think we're a little bit more in the middle now. And then there's a younger generation, right? That's coming up with things about things completely different.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It's been such a privilege to be able to kind of talk to so many different people who are in that continuum to kind of hear how they're managing it, right? Even like how you think about things today and how you manage all that, right? It just must be a lot coming at you today from many different angles when they're like, Jay, what do you do, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
That's right.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And a lot of times too, when you talk to people, they have no idea what's happening outside the workplace.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
But so much that happens outside the workplace affects the workplace. It's really important for companies, too, to have mental health support tools for employees. So when they need things, people to talk to, applications, whether they're calm or others, therapy if they need it. If they just make those available and known, that's another step in the process.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
So that's why I always tell people it's not just one thing. It's kind of like a number of things you have to put together because people may take bits and pieces of each to make it their own. But it kind of shows them when they need it, it's there. And a lot of times people will go look for things on their own. They'll search and they'll see if you got tools and what companies.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I do find that you sometimes will lose good people because you're not supporting them in their journey. And so the more you could be there for them, And they know that. They become some of your most loyal, most productive, most culture-bearing, carrying the flag employees. And you didn't have to tell them to do it. They just kind of did it on their own. Absolutely.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I feel like those often are the best ones. And we have a lot of those. And I just feel very privileged that we have so many folks like that, that they just care deeply and it's personal for them. My previous company I had started was a caregiving company. And one thing I had noticed in that company was that so many people that were caring for others were suffering.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then they had to go to work. And people had no idea that they were doing like five jobs, caregiver, they were worrying about their finances, they were trying to figure out how they help people. And then they had to go to work and they had a litany of things they had to go do. And most people have no idea all these things are going on in their people's lives, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Because sometimes we just don't ask the question because we're so busy ourselves. Or sometimes we don't want to ask the question because we're so busy ourselves, we can't take anything else on. But I just feel that if we are just more aware and we create space for employees and we listen to what they have to say, flexible work schedules, what are they asking for?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
That's why I constantly poll our employees as well. What do you value? And they'll tell us. And then if we have stuff that they don't want, we put it away. I sometimes like, oh, all my employees want this gym membership. And then nobody uses it. And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, now I just ask. Let's have our team go out and say, here are the top 10 things. What do you want?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I think there's a lot of things that I'm not calm about throughout my day. I will tell you right now, I am in the throes of my oldest daughter applying to colleges. Even though I try to appear very calm in front of her and cool and collective, you know? And you don't want to be like a helicopter type of parent. There are times where I'm just like...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then we'll take away a couple of things that they don't use, you know, and we'll try to ask that almost every year.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I find that too amongst the younger generation. They just expect these things. And they're asking for them. And they'll give up other things along the way. And they're very vocal around it. And we've seen it now in all industries. You know, we've seen it happen in banking where people feel like, hey, you're not listening. And it takes a moment where they have to go to the press almost, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It shouldn't have to ever get there. If they were listening to those kids and listening to your employees, then you've got a continuous feedback loop. More companies, the baseline will be you have to have these services going forward. And I think over time, then that will open up a dialogue, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I also think with CEOs today, I'll tell you, because it starts so much at the top, if you start to have some of these conversations and say, here's how I think about it, here's how you're being vulnerable, that too opens up a different conversation. And then that can just kind of percolate within the company. And then I think the whole thing starts to move faster, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then we can start to get more into a conversation of like, okay, now how do we get you the right care at the right time, when you need it, however you need it? Because so much of the conversation we're having right now is pretty basic in my mind. And we just need to get farther along in the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
you know i want to get in there and say something but i realize almost like the best thing for her is for her to go through it and i have to kind of take a back seat and so it's it's kind of going from where you take the wheel to like you're in the passenger seat and then you're in the back seat kind of peering every once in a while but i can't help myself from like i don't know when she first learned to drive by like saying oh i'm i'm stepping on the brake here and there right but uh
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah, I mean, I think I had both of those. I'll start with the second one first because it comes up a lot. And what I often tell people is when, I'll just use calm as an example, more than half the people that use calm today come to us for sleep. And they're having moments where they just can't fall asleep. Most of that comes, as we know, because they're sleeping next to their devices.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
The devices are constantly beeping. They don't shut them off. I talk about like it's hard, but I keep my phone outside my bedroom. Not everyone does that. When I travel, I don't do that. And sometimes it leads to not a good sleep. And we know when you have a number of those days that start to compound that It could lead to irritability.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It could lead to not being as productive the next day when you go to work because you're just tired, right? You couple that at times with potentially bad eating habits or some people drinking habits or other types of habits that aren't, and it creates kind of like what I call negative behavior. I had that when I was younger because I didn't understand some of these tools.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I just wish I had some of these tools when I was younger, because I didn't do those things that created positive behavior change. When I was in banking, for example, and when I got stressed, I turned to smoking. And I was just a kid. And I was like smoking in the stairwell of Salomon Brothers. I shouldn't have been smoking in the stairwell. That's number one.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I talked about this with our employees saying, hey, I didn't have apps like Calm or tools to help me in the moment. I wish I did. I probably would have turned to other things and understood that's positive behavior that I could turn to, not negative behavior. And if I have enough of that, then it starts to kind of change the pendulum because I then ended up on a very slippery slope.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You know, you're smoking, you start to drink a little bit more, then I'm eating more at odd hours, and then I try to go to sleep. And you just know if you're trying to eat Chinese food at 11.30 and you want to go to bed at 12 or 12.30, you're not going to sleep well because there's just a lot of stuff just sitting there, right, keeping you awake.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And so for me, it's been this continuous kind of learning. And we talk about some of these things. And, you know, I think in the workforce, it's no different because people have got to shuttle the kids off to school in the morning and you've got to make breakfast, you've got to do all these things. So you kind of need good sleep at night. And it starts, I think, a lot there.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then during the day, we need breaks. People think, and it's in the book, that our brain has endless capacity. It's just not true. We don't have endless capacity. Our brain, like everything else, needs to recharge. And if you can find ways to recharge, whether it's listening to you every day, congratulations on over 600 episodes.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
We were talking about 50 million streams as our chief purpose officer, which I am so grateful for because there are times where Those seven minutes for me where I listen to you, whether it's in the car, driving my kids to school, takes 10 minutes. Some days it takes 30 with traffic. They're moments that I just cherish or when I'm driving back alone.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And it just helps me then as I start to recenter myself to be more productive during the day. Or during the day, I take a short break and I know how to recharge now, whether it's going outside, walking or others. And it makes me so much more productive.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Because what I find is if I work in a manner and I find myself falling below 50%, 25% of my battery, and I just keep trying to power through, my work gets, it's not very good.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
That's one thing right now that is probably a little stressful.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It's embarrassingly bad, I would say at times. And no amount of AI is going to make it better. Yeah. You know, it's just not. Yeah. And so I then have to kind of take a step back And be like, okay, you're trending in the wrong direction. Take a beat. And I talk about this at a company and with many other companies that are out there today.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I know so many employees I talk to resonate around this.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Right? Because they just feel it's an endless hamster wheel.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Short with people, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Why is that? Yeah. When I was younger, and I didn't understand this when I was 14 years old, and I think it was much younger. I wrote about in the book that I was 14. I actually think it happened when I was younger. I just don't recollect those times. When I got really stressed or nervous, and most of the time they're around like tests or speaking stuff or in front of the class. Of course.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I just started to get a tightness in my chest. I would get shortness of breath at times. I would sweat in my hands. And I didn't really understand what was happening. And I talked to my mom, you know, and like a very traditional Korean mother, she would be like, just power through it. And I'm like, okay, I'm just going to power through it, right? But she didn't know either what was happening.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I don't blame her around that. She just didn't understand in the moment. The reality is when you think about your mental health, it's not about just do. And it's not about powering through the moment. For me, it's about powering up. And that's where the battery analogy keeps coming back in. And I didn't understand some of that. And then I didn't have the vocabulary.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It wasn't really until I started getting into healthcare that I started to understand, oh, wow, this is what you were going through. You've been able to kind of manage it through some unhealthy behaviors at times, and now you are doing it through healthy behaviors. but the vocabulary has changed, right? And you have a better command of that vocabulary.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
So you know how to talk about it now, where I didn't know how to talk about it then. And so I do think so much of the population today is about powering through it. And I do think a lot of the population, and I would say more in countries like Korea or Asia, even though mental health is the most approachable it's ever been, like in the States, it's not really approachable there.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And that does make me sad at times when I go back home. My parents moved back to Korea. They live there. I want to talk about these things with them. And it's just not easy for them to talk about, right? I don't know how it was for you. Did you talk about this when you were a kid?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Good for you. I wish I had done that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Mm-hmm. I mean, you forget that, right? You forget that. You just forget it. I mean, you think about those numbers. Whether it's two-thirds or one-third of all people feeling this way, and you start to realize, well, that's heavy. And if you were in a room and three out of 10 or six out of 10 are feeling a certain way, you start to realize there's more.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You know, the recharge came from a good friend of mine. And we were talking about mental health and I just asked her, I said, you know, how's it going with your kids? And she goes, you know, I was talking to my kids and I just said, how's your battery? And I was like, wait, what? And she goes, well, I said, how's your battery? I said, why?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
This is why with corporations, I think it's so important that they can take leadership positions.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Again, I always go back to the top on some of these things because if we're not comfortable being vulnerable, and if we're not comfortable making sure that our HR teams have the tools to talk about this with employees, that we don't support some of these initiatives. We're kind of in a place where we're saying, oh, we don't believe some of those stats, but the stats are there and growing, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And yes, there's life things that are happening, but technology is moving so fast on the other side, right? I mean, we are definitely in an era right now where kids have grown up with their smartphones. They act differently than when I grew up or when you grew up. It's just different, right? And they grew up with this technology. They're very comfortable with it, the speed of it, which is coming.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then there's the weight of what's happening just in life around them. And so some of these things, even at the company level, which are interesting, and you don't do this, is like, and I found this a little bit with myself, I'll just tell you on a personal front, we're taught to play it very safe. And I think that's an important thing too.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I'll tell you a lot of people miss is that, you know, you don't want to say the wrong thing. So you're not going to talk about your own vulnerability because that's not playing it down the fairway. You kind of want to be boring. I'll be frank with you for a lot of leaders, not all leaders, which we know there's a couple of them that are quite, but for most leaders, when you go out there,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
They're media trained to be right down the fairway. And what I love when I listen and watch your podcast, it's so authentic. It's so real. It's so safe for all the people that listen. And then, and it just shows, right? With how many people are tuning in every day, right? And listening to you and doing what I did. It's like, I'll listen to somebody and then I'll go back to that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I'll be like, oh, I remembered that. I'm going to go back to that. And it's just because we just play it safe in a lot of places today. And you don't want to say the wrong thing. And I think it's okay. Even if I was here with you today and maybe something, and I didn't say the right thing today, I'm in a space where I feel so safe with you right now.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I just want to be myself and not everything's going to be perfect. Absolutely. Right? And that's kind of part of life. And I've started to accept that. And I've become much more vulnerable with my own employees to be like, hey, this is okay. And because of that, in the last couple of years, we're stronger. We're stronger as a company.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
We just had a board meeting and they're like, wow, this is great. Everyone's like, yes, we're doing much better. But I think because we're developing and really building on the right culture, we're asking the right questions and we want to lead by example.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Right.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And she said, well, if I ask them how they're doing, I get the plain fine. And because they're kids, they're just like, I'm fine. But if I ask them like, how's your battery? They're like, well, it's at like 50%. Or so you may need a snack because they're little. Or it's at 75%. She's like, oh, you're okay. Or sometimes they're at 25% and they just need something to decompress.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah, in the last one that you were at, I did talk about my smoking as a kid. I talked about me being overweight as a child, dealing with that, that insecurity. I've always had a struggle with food. I love French fries. I'm just going to, I guess I'm telling, I love ice cream. And I think sometimes, and I have a really, no matter what I try to do diet wise.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
If you put some fries in front of me, I'm going to eat them. If you put some ice cream in front of me and my kids are having, I'm going to eat some of that too. And my kids are like, dad, I thought you're like full. I was like, I was. So I struggle with that. I know when I'm a little bit stressed, I'm a little bit of a binge eater as well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I try to obviously develop a lot of healthy habits also around how do you be healthier? And so I do exercise a lot more. But some of those things are hard just to get rid of. You know, it's more like you're going to have to live with it and it's how you live with it. That's like that comment about stress.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You're never going to have a stress-free workplace, but you've got to figure out how you just have more healthy stress, right? How you stress rather than distress.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I think a lot of leaders today struggle with, as I spoke to you about vulnerability and how you gave the story about vulnerability, that story plays over and over again. Wow. You know, leaders struggle with how to be vulnerable. And I think it's generational on a personal level. I think the new leaders that are going to rise, the ones in their 20s, are going to have no problem.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
While we were talking about it, a light bulb just went out. And that light bulb that went on was about like, she took something that at times can be charged, and she took something and really simplified in a way that I think we would all understand, regardless of age. And I asked her, I was like, can I run with that? And she was like, yeah, sure, whatever, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Because when you look at social media today and a lot of the younger generation, they talk about their mental stress and they talk about their mental health and they're very open about it. Now, again, they may overuse it, but at least they're having a conversation around it. I think with other leaders today, when I talk to them, they're just like, hey, is it a sign of weakness like you brought up?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And is it going to be used against me?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Is someone going to write about it and say I'm too weak? Is the board going to think I'm weak as a leader? And I think that's ultimately also a fail of corporate stewardship because they have to also look after your mental health. And so I'm fortunate to be on the board of Calm today, but if I wasn't CEO, I would be asking that CEO, hey, how are you doing? How are you holding up?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Let's not talk about the numbers today. I find it really effective when I meet with CEOs and they ask for some coaching. We don't talk about any numbers. We don't talk about the metrics. We just talk about life. And we'll eventually go to that later.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
But I think when we start with more of a trusting place where we can understand what's happening around you, then I can be much more thoughtful in the type of advice I give. But this also means I have to create the space and the time to do it. So not everyone has that, right? And that's where I think it's just really important to be really intentional, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Be really purposeful in these conversations.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Well said.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And we still laugh about it, Brenda and I, because she's like, wow, you actually took it. And I was like, yeah, I used it as a theme. I talk about it. I go to clients. I'll go out. And it just kind of resonates with people because it's simple. And it doesn't kind of draw out any emotions. It just says like, hey, how's your battery? How are you feeling?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Speaking of that, because you've talked about, you know, certain rituals, are there certain things that you do every day, like religion every day that you just do?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah. I love that. I sometimes start my beginning of the week staff meetings with like, how was your weekend? Just tell us something that happened personal. I also find sometimes we get into all the details without getting to know one another. Yeah. And I find a lot... A lot of times teams don't work well. They can work better together when they're a little bit more personal with one another.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And it may, it doesn't have to be deep. It could just be like, hey, what did you do? Some people will say, I went on a hike. I, you know, went to my kid's game or, you know, I went, I traveled somewhere. or binge watch the show and we're all like, what show? What's your favorite show or something? And we just get to learn something a little bit more personal about the individual.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then it's less about, oh, did you hand in that PRD or something, right? It's just, it's more personal. Yeah. And I think, and by you just doing your wins every week, you know, how, I just, I love that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I think that sometimes that gets lost because we try to make it bigger sometimes than it is. And it's really nice when you can kind of just simplify it and just ask, yeah, how's your battery? How are you doing? I love the question, how's your battery, even more than...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
recharging and recharging your team. It's actually really interesting. I used to be one of the youngest execs in the room and now I'm the oldest person in the room. I think when I was younger, I felt that I had to be in every decision process. And that's a little bit of like, oh, I'm productive because I got my hands in everything. And it was probably the opposite.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I was probably causing more stress and less productivity on a person. And I realized that later that it's not the number of meetings or decisions you're making. It's not the quantity. It's the quality of those decisions. And I keep going back, always the quality of decision-making.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yes, that's great. So it's things that you feel that where you sit, for me, can move the business forward in the most meaningful manner. So sometimes it could be helping teams unlock a product decision. Sometimes it could be helping teams with partnerships that may move it forward. Other times it may mean things around culture or HR.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
But it's really being intentional in terms of the types of decisions you're making and where you're spending your time. It's not being in every decision with everybody because ultimately they have to make decisions too. One thing we've been doing now that I feel that has really brought the company closer together is we did this retreat where it wasn't just the leadership team.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
We brought many different people together. And I said, you guys come up with the company strategy. And they were like, and this woman, they were like, what? And I'm like- They're like, don't you have it? My younger self would have been like, here it is. I was like, no, you do it. And I'll tell you, it was so much better than what I was thinking.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And it just reminded me again, you hire all these smart people. You take all this time vetting them, doing reference checks. Let them do their job. Give them a chance, if it was a sports analogy, to shoot the ball. Give them a chance to play. Don't feel like you're keeping them on the bench the whole time and you have to do everything. And give them a shot. And I do that a lot more now.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
That's right.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I'm much more intentional with it now. It was great. We rolled it out to the company at that offsite you were at. People came away and said it was the most inspiring offsite. And they were like, that was great. I said, I didn't do it. They did it. It came from the team. And I think it felt so much more meaningful to them because it came from them. And it was so much more spot on.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And really what it was around was we've talked about trying to make the world healthier and happier. We've talked about as a company trying to be with you every step of the way in your mental health journey. And this was really around how do we become the most impactful consumer mental health company in the world? And when I sat back and said, that's what we want to become,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
and the team had kind of been the one synthesizing it, then everyone started mobilizing against it on their own. And they had thought about things that I had never even thought about because I'm just too far sometimes away from the details. And then now I've seen us accelerate. And I know that motion and muscle can be repeated, right? And you can bring it to other companies regardless of size.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I think sometimes as companies get larger, and I've had the fortune of starting my own company where it's like three of us, and then it grows to 30, whatever, 300, and then to thousands. And then I've had the fortune of joining companies later where it's thousands and it becomes hundreds of thousands. Ultimately, that culture is your bedrock.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You know, whether or not how many people you stack on top of it, what you start to set as your foundation will percolate amongst the entire company. And if you don't do that the right way, and if you're not thought, then you may not get the results that you're happy with, right? And you may create more stressful environments that you just unintentionally didn't think about.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And that's where I really appreciate about when leaders come around, they talk about being more thoughtful in their decision-making process, being more vulnerable, being more open, really thinking about employees' mental health, but then not just talking about it, but then really acting upon it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And if you can do that a little bit year after year, right, you can really create a special culture. And I think they'll do special things.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
To be more present. Mm-hmm. I recognize at times that I've been there, but not really. And so you do so good at this where you're just so present, whether it's one person or hundreds or thousands, I've seen it. I've been in your auditoriums where you've tried and everyone feels your presence and so presence.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Sorry, mom, because she's going to be listening and watching. And my mom, I love my mom. So I'm going to start by that. And she's given me lots of great advice. but this probably was the worst advice she gave me as a child, which was to power through. And it's not about powering through, it's really about powering up. And she didn't know, but mom, I think it was not about powering through.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Question number three, what's your three favorite ways to power up? So I have rituals like you and my rituals in the morning. When I wake up, I don't look at my phone right away. I actually go downstairs. I start the coffee. I open the window and I walk outside and I take three breaths. And it's been something I've been very intentional about doing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
If I'm traveling, I try to open the window, wherever it may be, if you're in an apartment or something. That process starts to center me. The second I do is I do a lot of walking meetings. And so I'm a big fan of trying to break things up that help me recharge. So people give me energy. I would say going outside, breathing, people give me energy.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And then lastly, I think similar to yourself, I love to exercise as well. And I've become a lot better at keeping a steady schedule around it. And even someone said this to me the other day, they said, do something every day. right? And I'm like, great, I'm going to do something every day. And I'm going to be really intentional about it and just keep at it. Some days I'll go to the gym.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Some days I'll do something at home. It'd be really quick, but exercise as well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I turn everything off, meaning the following. So it won't be just putting my phone and turning it over because I don't think sometimes that's enough. I'll just be like, you know what? I'm kind of done. I wanted to ask you earlier, because I'm curious. If you had a day and you didn't use your phone, social media, what does that day look like for you?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah, and I try to do it really simply. I have found, and I'll talk about my own kids at times, when I ask them that question, how their battery is, I notice that they check, like most people, they check their phones quite often. And at some point it just becomes like a reflex and they don't even know they're checking it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Yeah. That's great.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Kids have to go to gym five days and they know there's physical exercise. And it's just kind of like, it's just understood. Why can't we take some of that time for children to also better understand their own mental health and to teach them about their mental health? Because we know so much of this starts early, just like it started with myself at 14.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
If I had that vocabulary at 14, I probably would have developed better kind of healthy behaviors at 14 and did that as I turned into a young adult. So I would love to take a little bit of time. It doesn't have to be all the time.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
It could be carve outs, maybe once, twice, three times a week where we educate our children and check up on them, on their mental health or their battery and ask them the question.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And you know them.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And thank you for taking the time, having me here. Thank you for talking about the book. It's... It's something I'm so proud of. I hope people really get something out of it. We talked to a lot of different folks. Like you said, like Randall, who you know as well, and many other folks there, Delilah. And they just talked about so many amazing things.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I was really touched by talking to each and every one of them. I was honored to hear their stories. And it just made me a better person. It also has helped me in my mental health journey. And I hope it helps some other people as well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You never asked me how my battery is.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I would tell you my battery is at over 100% because I got to spend time with you. You're too kind. No, no. And I'll tell you... conversations like this just recharge and energize me. I love the fact that we got to sit. I've loved the fact that I got to know you personally and professionally. I'm so grateful for our friendship, your mentorship, your words of wisdom.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I know how many millions of people you affect every day. I mean, over 50 million people at Calm, the entire employee base of Calm, really just, I can't tell you the impact you've made both on us on a personal and professional front. So thank you. I want to ask you, how's your battery? Do you know what?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
But when they do look at it and the power's down or it goes yellow or it goes red, they get a little panicked. Like, oh my God, I got to charge it. Imagine my surprise when we're in like airports and they're like going out to people, can I use a little of your charge, right? I think we've all been there where we don't have a charger and you're like, I need something. Can somebody help me out?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Thank you, Jay. Thank you, David.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Most times people are really kind and they'll just, you know, kind of help you, especially if you're a kid. I thought about then putting it into zones and I put it into four zones. And I just said, you know, if you're at 75 to 100, you're probably fine. And meaning that, you know, you're in a zone where you're just moving along.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
If you're at 50 to 75, you're probably in a place where you might need to start to think about how you may want to recharge. If you're in that 25 to 50, it's time to start figuring out, take a break. You may need to take a walk. You may need to put down the phone. You may need to stop the litany of Zoom calls that you're on right now, right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And if you find yourself zero to 25, that's a real kind of indicator for you to say, hey, something's probably not right. And I need to really kind of take a hard stop and figure out how I recharge. And recharge can happen in a number of different ways. And so I've often talked about when I've gotten into that zone, I just kind of almost go for a walk. I sometimes go outside.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I take some deep breaths. I do a number of things. Sometimes I may need a workout. A workout really helps me to recharge on a personal front. And everyone's a little bit different, and they'll go to different techniques. And so in the book, I list a lot of things in the book that you may do. You may do one, two, three, four, all of them.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And they're just really techniques for you to figure out what works for you.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
100%.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
100%. And, you know, it's funny. You and me are the same on batteries. I keep my battery pretty charged as well. I have an electric car too. I marvel at people who could take that electric car battery down to 5%. I can't do it. That stresses me out. I'm stressed out when they tell me these stories. Oh, I took the battery down to 5%. I'm like, seriously? How?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I mean, and they're like, oh, it's fine. You know? And for some people it works, right? For me, that doesn't work. I'm plugging in that battery every night and I'm going to make sure I charge that battery up. Others will let it go pretty low. Everyone's a little bit different. That works for them. I've asked some of my friends who charge it, go really low.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And they're like, well, if I charge it too much, I get stressed. I'm like, oh, okay. It can work the other way. Interesting. So it's got to kind of work for you and how you want to recharge and different techniques that you want to do.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
I've learned to like... take the space to give them space so we can actually have a proper conversation. If you find someone at a really low percentage, and I may ask that person, like, how are you doing? How are you feeling? And they, and most of the time you just want a, I'm good. Because then you just want to keep going.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I find that often in the business world as well, not just in the personal world, but in the business world, we don't want a response that Or sometimes we don't have the time to be like, if that person who you're asking the question to says, I'm not doing so hot and I'm not doing so well, then what do you do?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
So I'm very intentional when I ask some of these questions to individuals so that I'm ready for that response if it's I'm not doing well, like a 5%. So I kind of want to frame it there. I love that, yeah. I think sometimes you rush through these conversations. Yeah. And then when they do tell you they're a five or a 10, I think the best things that I have found is you have to be present for them.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
You have to listen. You do such a brilliant job at that, Jay, because even in this type of environment, we know as we have this one-to-one conversation, if I was telling you I was a five or a zero, you'd be all in on this and you would hear me out. And then you would start to tell me, okay, let's talk about what's causing that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And I've had at times where family members have come to me and said, hey, I'm out of five. And we start to break it down. And I said, let me put it in another way for you. Think about your phone. And we do checks on our phone. And there's things on your phone that drain your battery more than other applications.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And they're like, yeah, it's like when you go and Apple shows you what's draining or taking up all your memory. And what happens when you start to delete some of those things? Or what happens when you start to recognize what's causing it? They're like, oh, my battery is much more efficient. And I'm like, yeah. So what's causing that in your personal life right now?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And we try to create analogies of different things. And so it doesn't become a space where all we're doing is talking about all the negativity. We're trying to draw parallels to different things in everyday life. And so that it doesn't become such a charged conversation. And that's kind of the recharge concept as well, where we're like, let's talk about your mental health.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
Because sometimes some people don't want to talk about their mental health. But when we bring up the battery conversation or how to recharge, it's just a different framing. And again, this is something I think you just do brilliantly to bring everyone in. And I try to do the same thing there as well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
3 Ways to Recharge Your Battery & 3 Daily Practices to Reduce Stress by 100% with the CEO of Calm @davidko
And that's part of being a lot more present and intentional. As leaders, and I'd be curious now for you as CEO as well, we're expected to have all the answers. We're expected to make many different types of decisions. We're expected to play roles in HR, but also company strategy. And when you take a step back, you can't make every decision. And then there's always things that are the unexpected.