Melody Wilding: Somewhere along the way, maybe you feel like work stopped being something you do, and instead has become something you carry. Something you carry into your evenings, your weekends, your relationships, your sleep. You might even have felt that uncomfortable tension of, on one hand, you enjoy your job, you like being really dedicated to your career.

But on the other hand, there are these moments where there’s just this stress, this resentment building where it feels like your work is taking over your life. And that’s because work today, it is no longer just nine to five. So if you have ever shut your laptop at the end of the day and realized your brain was still going, it was still processing everything that happened that day, listen up because today’s episode is for you.

If you have ever found yourself replaying a meeting while you were brushing your teeth, answering emails in your head when you were supposed to be relaxing. Or feeling irritable out of nowhere at home and not being able to know why, my guest today, Dr. Guy Winch, is here to help. Guy is an internationally renowned psychologist whose books have been translated into over 30 languages, including his amazing first book, which I absolutely love, Emotional First Aid. He has three viral TED Talks that have been viewed over the 35 million times. And his highly anticipated new book, mind Over Grind. How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. It is out now and it is exactly what we get into today.

Guy, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me on Psychology at Work. It is a pleasure and honor to have you here.

I’m so looking forward to this conversation.

Guy Winch: Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to have the conversation.

Melody Wilding: Yes. And I was a huge fan of your first book, Emotional First Aid, and you had a podcast that was a gigantic hit, Dear Therapist. Now you have a new book coming out. Just tell us a little bit about that book. And I wanna hear what led you from some of the work you were doing to this new topic.

Guy Winch: So the new book is called Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. What shifted me from the emotional first aid book and the general kind of toolkit for, for life was what I was seeing happen the workplace.

Over the past five years, the workplace has become much more stressful. Work stress is peaking, burnout is peaking, and that’s one side of the problem. The other side that I was seeing much in my work with companies and my coaching and my therapy practice, was how much that was spilling over and impacting us outside work. And that people were not aware how these things were ping ponging from one sphere to the other. And how much they were really suffering and how much their relationships were suffering, their individual lives were suffering. Let alone their productivity and ability to do well at work. And so I really started looking at the research and there’s so much compelling research out there that explains and, and illustrates the ways these things are happening.

And there’s so many things we can actually do to make things better,

in the workplace and again, outside of it because of work. I decided, well, I should really write something about that.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And you could not have found, I mean, to have you on this show, you are speaking to every single person who is, who is listening today, because really the, the people that I attract and what’s been my own story is really having almost that obsession with your work, where you’re finding all of your self-worth, your meaning, it becomes an addiction almost. And it’s interesting what you said that this book is about how work hijacks your mind and how, how do you decouple those things. But you said we don’t, we often don’t even realize that that’s happening. Do you think it’s because that’s just become normalized, that it’s what everyone around us is doing?

Why do, why don’t you think we’re recognizing the consequences or what is happening here?

Guy Winch: We have a need to feel that we can manage ourselves psychologically more than we actually can in terms of effectiveness. So, you know, usually when I say to people, how much are you able to leave things at the office versus allow them to spill over and, and impact your home life? And they go, no, no, no. I, I really, I mean, it can be difficult days, but I, I really try and, you know, and leave it at the door. And, uh, the reality is no, you, you can’t because when you are in that kind of intense mode that we can be in. That we can be an at work. When you are in a hostile work environment, in a pressured, demanding work environment, or even if you are extremely passionate about what you do when you are all in, in the workplace, that shift from being all in, from being highly activated, from being fully immersed to downgrading to your family life or your personal life. That switch doesn’t happen on a dime psychologically. No one do that. Like that. It actually takes a lot of intentionality, a lot of awareness, a lot of deliberate mechanisms to downshift gears from that fourth or fifth gear to a second or or third. So we are kidding ourselves when we think we can do that, and we do it automatically.

And I always say to people, ask a family if they don’t pick up on that tension, you know? And some people would actually say, no, I know I get home a little irritable, but you know, that’s okay. And I’m like. Well, is it because that has, you know, like follow on effects and that impacts a lot of things and dynamics within the household and parenting and relationships. So in part, we don’t realize because we tend to think we’re more on top of these things than we truly are by far.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. And when you say work hijacking your mind, I do wanna talk about the effects, the, the spillover effect on family, maybe even your team. But what are some examples the person listening might say? They hear that term work hijacking your mind, and they’re like, oh, yeah, I know what that means, but what, what does that look like day to day when you’re experiencing it in your mind, in your body?

What’s going on?

Guy Winch: Let’s look at one of the most common examples, and that’s the ability to switch off. In other words, when I say to people, when does your workday end? They always say to me, oh, I leave the office at seven or at six, or I shut my laptop, my, my laptop off at, at at eight, whatever it is. That is not when your workday ends.

Your workday ends when you stop thinking about work because if you’re still thinking about work, you’re still at work. And that does not happen at six o’clock or seven o’clock for most people. The ability to switch off some people, you know, we, we get in after a very demanding day. We are desperate. unwind and we cannot stop ruminating work.

Those intrusive thoughts will bombard us no matter how much we’re trying to be engaged with our kids, with our families, with whatever it is that we are doing. We just keep getting dragged back. So even our thoughts get hijacked in that way. And much as we try to say, no, I don’t wanna think about that, you’ll be back to thinking about it three minutes later because that’s how intensely work invade our thoughts.

Melody Wilding: Mm. Yeah. And how is it also contagious with our family members? Because we might, we may think we’re doing a good job compartmentalizing it, but as you said, we’re not. How do you know when it’s leaking over to other people? And it’s not necessarily, it’s maybe a you problem, not a them problem. ’cause I think it’s easy to come home and say, oh, well my, my spouse is stressed.

That’s why they’re lashing out on me, versus it being this spillover effect.

Guy Winch: Well, we know that moods of all kinds are extremely contagious. You know, the negative moods are very contagious. If you are with somebody who’s very, very irritable, good luck being in a good mood. Around them. They don’t have to be close, you know, a, an office mate, somebody who shares a desk next to you, if they’re stew and, uh, like that, it, it leaks over. By the way, sort of positive moods.

That’s why standup always works better in clubs when everyone else is laughing around you because it makes everything seem funnier than it would be if you’re just looking at home on the television or on, on a screen. So, so moods are very, very contagious and when you are trying to contain it, you are not being yourself.

You are sitting there, you are tenset, you are holding. It in You are trying not to show. stressed you are or how irritable you are, but it manifests, it raid, you can roast a marshmallow on some people from the amount of radio, you know, like irritation that’s coming from them. And, and they think that, well, I I’m not expressing it.

No, you are not, and you’re trying really, really hard. But everyone can tell. People can also tell when they’re talking to you and

you seem

checked out because your eyes get a little glazed and you are back thinking about the thing that happened at work and you’re nodding and mm-hmm. Mm, yes. Mm. But you’re not there, and they can tell that you’re not there.

So it, you know, we, we, we can tell. And, and then the other thing that happens, and this research is, is very, very clear, is that when we are very preoccupied with work, then we start to fail in our household duties, we, we just don’t show up. Because we’re so drained, we feel, you know, so, so put out. And sometimes we’ll come home and they, they just don’t understand what I’ve been through today.

They don’t get it. And so your, your kids are running to the door to greet you and it feels inconsiderate. It feels invasive on, on their part because, wait, I, I need a minute. Why don’t they get that? You know, well put their five is for one reason. But, but those are the kinds of things that happen extraordinarily commonly.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. Yeah. And the worst part is, as you’re talking through this, I’m realizing that the worst part of all of that is while you’re trying to squash this down and, and, and suppress those emotions, you’re giving more attention to the work stress, which is a further reinforcement, that this is important. It should be prior preoccupying all of my time.

This should be my main priority. And what, what a terrible irony that is. Um, what is happening neurologically? ’cause you, you talk about some of the, the science in the book. So when we get into those rumination, almost obsessive loops about work, especially with the unconscious mind, we don’t even realize it’s happening in the background.

What’s happening for us neurologically when that’s occurring?

Guy Winch: So our, our unconscious mind is, you know, operates very differently than our, our conscious mind. When we are being intentional and deliberate, we can avail ourselves. cortex and planning and consequences and empathy and all those lovely things and skills that we have when we are on autopilot, when we are not being deliberate and intentional, which we can’t be all the time at all.

So most of the time we are not, uh, our unconscious mind kind of makes Decisions and they make and, and it makes quick ones based on very simple heuristics. It’s a much more primitive form of cognition. And so it’s much more interested in immediate relief than it is in in long-term consequences. And so when you are not paying attention, your unconscious mind is much more likely to say, yes, maybe you should be actually helping out with dinner or helping the kids with their homework, but you are so stressed out, this would be a terrific time to check your social media and to start looking at reels.

And suddenly you find yourself doing that when you’re partners going like, hey, can I get, you know, a hand here, or, or, or what? And then you are annoyed because like, I’ve just taking a minute. I just got in. You know, that, that kind of is the thing that happens. And, and unconsciously our, our mind thinks that work is the most important thing going on for us because it’s very concrete. Where did you spend most of your day? At work. is the thing that you know gives you, you know, most of your needs, including home security, food status, self-esteem, appreciation, respect? Your work. Clearly that’s the most important thing. So let’s keep you focused on that. That’s where you know, bad things can happen if they go wrong, home is different. Again, that’s the unconscious kind of default, and that’s why it keeps you thinking about work, because that’s the most important thing. Don’t take it right off that.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And like you were saying, you know, I’ve, I’ve come across stats that say 70% or more of our life is spent at work. No wonder, no wonder it’s such just this huge presence and I think even more now, where I hear from clients every single day, these are really accomplished, mid senior, sometimes c-suite level people who are living with this low, sometimes high grade anxiety about, I don’t know if my job is going to be here tomorrow.

I’m waiting for the next reorg. I’m waiting for them to make cuts. I’m waiting for AI to replace me. And so it, it really is this almost as existential threat of, you know, the, the lower parts of Maslow’s hierarchy of will I be able to feed my family will, you know, forget the, the self-actualization pieces.

We’re actually wondering, will I be able to pay my rent because what if I don’t have a salary tomorrow? So it becomes that much more real for people. All right, we, we have all of these different factors combined. What do we do, Guy? What do we do to start to detach from this? How do we prioritize our mind over the grind?

Guy Winch: Right. So look, the, the, the second half, you know, the subtitle is called How to Break Free. Win work hijacks your life. And, and, and, and the basic principle in all the different areas that I talk about, ’cause I, I really cover a lot of different areas there when it’s our thoughts on emotional intelligence, our coping mechanisms, our self-esteem, our identity, et cetera, our relationships.

But, but, uh, ethics even. Um, but the principle of all of them is that you have to disengage your autopilot. You can’t just be on autopilot. You can’t just keep doing what you’re doing. You have to become, first of all, aware. of Actually what’s happening? What are these mechanisms? I, I, I try and explain very, very basic things in the, in the book about how our psychology operates,

so you understand this is why things are going the way they are, this is why they’re going wrong. Once you understand that, then it’ll make much more sense to you about then how you fix that. But the fix is not this herculean task. It is small tweaks and small adjustments in these different areas. I’m gonna give you like one example. Um, one of the things, again, this is one of the mind, one of the ways our mind foils us is we get home from a very demanding day, and we feel absolutely drained. Well, I am wiped out. can’t do anything. I just need to veg out now for three to four hours. I need to like, you know, binge whatever the show is, or just sprawl out on my couch.

I, I’m just completely, you know, exhausted. There’s nothing I’m able to do. Well, that’s not true because our mind confuses, very badly, physical exhaustion and mental exhaustion. You are not physically exhausted. Most of us do not have menial jobs in which we’re running around all day. Obviously some do and then you get to veg. Um, but most of us are sitting so we’re not physically exhausted. We are wiped out mentally, but not physically. And the research shows that if you then spend the three hours vegging, you will wake up tired the next day.

Melody Wilding: Hmm.

Guy Winch: No matter how much you rested, what that did is it prevented your batteries from further depletion. It did not recharge them. To recharge. To revitalize right to to, to rejuvenate requires an activity that is recharging to you. It does not happen on the couch. It depends on who you are and what’s recharging to you. If you are athletic, yes, you have to drag your ass to the gym or for a run, and if you are an extrovert, yes, you have to go and meet up with a friend,

you have to go and do half an hour of making or the creative thing or whatever it is that

does it for you. And your mind is telling you, no, no, no. You don’t have it in you. You are exhausted. You need to just sit. That’s incorrect. It’s an example of where we have to override that strong message that’s coming from our unconscious mind of, oh, you just don’t have anything left. You got plenty left.

Because everyone knows when you force yourself to do those things, you have expanded energy, but you come back feeling more recharged, more energized, and more revitalized before you left.

Melody Wilding: Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s so good that we confuse mental exhaustion and physical exhaustion and like you were saying, it’s so, I think someone listening to this may hear, okay, I just need better discipline then, which. Maybe I’m a big fan of discipline, but at the same time it also sounds like we have to understand that there is a longer term gain or even longer term pain.

We are avoiding by swallowing the short term like, yes, I have to get my ass off of the couch and go to the gym or go to that dinner with friends. You know, sometimes when, when my social battery or mental battery’s running very low, it’s the social things that I resist because I’m like, I can’t. I can’t even will my brain to string more words together and be on in front of people. But I have to, I have to have that longer, medium term perspective that I know every time that I force myself to do it, quote unquote, I feel better afterwards.

And so it is that kind of, that momentary, you have to get over the hump. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that for the person who’s like, I just, I, I, I don’t think I’m disciplined enough to will myself to do that.

Guy Winch: Yes. And here’s the thing, it’s a dosage thing.

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Guy Winch: You, you don’t feel like, you know, getting in the car and driving half an hour to go to the dinner for an hour and a half and then driving half an hour, that’s too much for you, okay? Instead, how about you call a friend and have a video catch up

for 30 minutes because that will help you don’t have it in you to go to the gym for a full on workout.

What about a 15 minute? Run around the block pushups and sit ups. You don’t have any to start taking out the paints and painting. Maybe you sketch for 10, 15 minutes. Here why this is important because we are fully fleshed three dimensional people, or at least we were before we started working. And then when what work does, especially if our jobs again, are demanding, exciting, engaging, difficult, whatever the thing is, is we start to cut those aspects of ourselves out, you know, I say in the book, we start amputating aspects of our personality and our identity one by one until we are left as very two dimensional people. We’re all duty. We, we, we go to work to do the duty. We come home, we do the duty, we veg out in between, there’s not much left of who we actually are as people.

And yes, you don’t have time to do the triathlons you used to do. Or I speak in someone with someone in the book. Follow five characters throughout this book and, and, and the, the narrative thread is about what happens to them over a certain period in their work lives. And one of them turned out, he used to do, um, improv in college.

He, he can’t start joining an improv troop. He’s a lawyer now, but can he not do 15 minutes of improv? A day even with his kids or with his family. Can you not practice that a little bit? Because that 15 minutes nourishes that aspect of his identity. It gives oxygen to that facet of his personality that otherwise gets snuffed. And so it’s about enriching yourself, reminding yourself, you know, like feeling like a three-dimensional person again and not letting work take over entirely and making you just that drone that just does that.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, and it reminds me of, I’m sure you’ve come across that research of this idea of diversifying your sense of self. Where you have to think of it almost like an investment portfolio where you have, you have stocks and bonds and cash. But if, if all of our identity is in our work, if things are stressful, if your job changes, you get a, a boss you don’t like, that’s a, that’s a fragile place to be with all of your eggs in that one identity basket.

But as you’re saying, if you see yourself as a lawyer, maybe a creative, a partner, and you invest even just slightly in those, you could hold more cash, right? You could be holding a lot in your work identity. But even if you’re putting 10% in bonds and stocks right now, that, that helps balance that out so that if work goes sideways, which it will, you have to just expect that you’re not in this, everything is not ruined for you.

Guy Winch: Right, right.

Melody Wilding: yeah,

Guy Winch: The guy with the improv doing 15 minutes of it a day,

Melody Wilding: yeah.

Guy Winch: you know, makes the muscles, you know, come back alive in the

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Guy Winch: that, that, that way of thinking, it makes you feel like that

Melody Wilding: Mm-hmm.

Guy Winch: minutes. That’s all it takes. You just wanna feel like that again and remember what that feels like.

Remember what it feels like to be able to, to write a poem. ’cause you haven’t done it, you know, since college. Remember what it, and, and that can be 20 minutes. Do you know? I mean, because that feeling. Is enough that starts to nourish it. It’s not a huge investment, and that’s the whole point of the book. It you don’t, this is not a huge makeover thing. These are these small tweaks that could make huge differences and have incredible ROI.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Getting out of the black and white thinking, if I don’t do it 110%, and I, I think for a lot of ambitious people listening to this too, they, they may also hear, well, if I don’t turn this into a business or something else, well then why, why would I do it? You can have a hobby or an interest for the sake of it. You can dabble it. It is not frivolous. Right. This, this actually has an investment and a return on that.

Guy Winch: Mm.

Melody Wilding: What do you say to the person or how do you work with your own clients around turning off your brain at the end of the day or better compartmentalizing so you’re not running the that unconscious review of the workday in the background?

Guy Winch: The, the two things that I talk about in the book. One of them is that you need a transition ritual to train your brain to switch from work mode to family mode, personal life, whatever the thing is after.

To non-work mode. And it, and it requires a ritual because rituals have certain repetitive elements.

They resonate deeper than just a routine ritual has, has meaning it really does train your brain well. You know, when, when, when. Parents know that when they’re putting young kids to sleep, they don’t just put them to sleep an hour before they put them to sleep, we start lowering the lights. We keep things a little quieter.

We start bringing down the energy levels because we know it’ll take them an hour to shift gears down from, me, from. Sorry, um, because it will take young kids an hour to shift gears from full on play mode and running around the house and screaming to that quiet, let’s get ready for bed. We are not that different. We could do it quicker, need to get our brain into that mode. So a transition ritual should include as many of the senses as possible. Sound. Music is very evocative. Have your playlist that you play that shifts you. Clothing. Tactile. Our clothing is very embodied. You know, there’s a reason we call power suits.

Power suits and the, because they make us feel powerful, right? So whatever clothes you associate with work change out of them. And people say to me, well, I’m work from home. I’m in jeans and t-shirts. Terrific. Have jeans and t-shirts that you wear when you are working and a different set that you associate with your personal life and switch. Those things. Shift the lighting use sense if you can, candles, whatever it is, all of those signal your body like we’re shifting now a more personal life, family life into a different mode. We don’t need to be highly activated. We don’t need to be in fight or flight now. That’s the main message.

We’re trying to de-stress and be less activated. Step one, step two, when the ruminations about work occur to you. Because after difficult days after conflict, after uncertainty, you mentioned the uncertainty with job insecurity, ai, mergers, acquisitions, all, all the reorgs, all those things. It’s rampant now in so many industries.

So how do you, well, when those start to occur, you need to shift them. From this unproductive rumination of just spinning around, oh my God, what’s gonna happen if I lose my job? What’s gonna happen if AI comes in all these, it’s wonderful thought, but just repeating it 20 times. You’re not actually into a problem that can be solved. Because when we are actually problem solving, when we’re action item thinking, then it eases stress. And then we can actually put it aside. So the problem about, okay, is AI coming, or I know there are layoffs coming in six months, then start strategizing, okay, what’s the problem to be solved? What’s my plan A?

What’s my plan B? What’s my threshold for action? How long do I wait before I do this? When do I start updating my resume? Once you start making all these decisions about, this is how I will operate, and this is when I will do those things, isn’t it as detailed the way as possible? It’s easier when that rumination about, Ooh, what about my job? Occurs to you to go like, well, I have a plan. It’s easier to put it aside because you problem solved it.

Melody Wilding: Mm-hmm. You’ve given your mind that sense of, of certainty. You know, and I, I always am telling my clients, if you have those open loops in your brain, your, your brain is like a car trying to start. It’s going to keep turning the key on the ignition until something catches. And so, as you were saying, having a, a way that you are planning, or at the very least, capturing some of those things, so you’re putting your mind at ease.

It’s not turning over those open loops again and again and again. Yeah. I love this. It’s, it’s so practical. I love the takeaway around the transition ritual that you need to start a lot sooner than you think. You can’t come home and expect to go from 80 miles an hour that you’ve been going all day down to 10, right?

You need to go from 80 to 60 to 40 and and downshift gradually. Which I think, understanding that can help people reverse engineer into what they need to do.

There, there’s one, uh, reframe that I loved in the book you talk about instead of thinking of, I have a stressful job thinking of it as my job has stressful moments.

What difference does that make and how might you use that with someone who says, no, I objectively have a really stressful job by managing millions of dollars. I have these huge accounts. I have a crisis and a fire drill to put out every single day, Guy. You don’t get it. My job is actually extremely high pressure.

What would you say to that person around that reframe?

Guy Winch: What happens when you say to yourself, my job is actually extremely high pressure, is that you’re gonna experience every minute of your workday and the work week in activation in fight or flight in ready for disaster to happen in ready for that big thing. In other words, your stress response is gonna be on full on all the time. I would tell you that there is no job. I’ve worked, I work with founders, with governments with like, there is no job that is like that morning till night. seven days a week. There just isn’t. There is that half an hour that you can get once in a while for lunch. There is that meeting that’s a little boring and whatever, but it’s not, you don’t have to, you know, be on, on alert for that meeting. Yes, there are moments where your job is very, very stressful and there might even be many of them, but instead of saying, my job is relentlessly stressful all the time. Be more nuanced and say, my job has a lot of high pressure, but today I have a couple of meetings that are a little less so, so I can relax a little bit.

In those meetings today, I have the option to take a 15 minute walk around the block between these two things so I can refresh myself. Today I am gonna bring my favorite lunch to work and I’m gonna like take 15 minutes and enjoy that lunch between meetings today. I have to sit through this boring thing, but you know what, I’ll take the boring ’cause it’s a break from the other kinds of things.

Like be accurate. But be more nuanced. Because that allows you during the boring thing, during the low stress thing, during the lunch break, during the toilet break, to not have to be on high alert all the time. Otherwise you will be. So redefine. Stop telling yourself my job is relentlessly stressful, or, I hate my job, or I hate my boss.

You hate your boss. You are not spending every minute alongside your boss. You’re not. So you have to redefine it in ways that allow you to experience the less stressful moments as less stressful. Otherwise, you’re stressing yourself out needlessly and adding tons of stress that are not accurate. And, and are gonna cost you and lead you to toward burnout when you don’t need that. It’s not correct.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, and I. So appreciate that point about nuance. I mean, I think we need that all across the board. We live in a time where there is such a lack of nuance online and in how we communicate with one another. And just like you were saying, it’s, it’s the reminder that the stories you tell yourself will become your reality.

’cause you’ll look for even, even a certain comment from your boss if you are saying over and over to yourself, my job is relentlessly stressful, right? People are always giving me crap. And then even the smallest thing, you’re going to amplify into a bigger thing and inflict more stress on yourself.

And sometimes I have found it helpful for the more rebellious among us. I have found it helpful to think, do I really wanna give these people in this situation so much power over me, and so much control over my life. And I think everything you’re saying is a excellent reminder that we don’t have to be at the whim.

We don’t have to be jerked around by the situations and the circumstances around us. Sure, it may be hard, right? Like let’s just, like you were said, you, you said be accurate, but be more nuanced about it. And it could be a both, and it doesn’t have to be this dramatic either or. That’s what I’m hearing in everything that you’re saying.

So Guy, thank you so much. I know there are so many people who are going to probably listen to this twice. Share it with people they know. At the time we are, uh, airing this your book is just going to be hitting shelves, so tell people where they can get it and where they can, can connect with you.

Guy Winch: They can connect with me@guywinch.com, , and they will find options to see where the book is being sold. It’s being sold everywhere. It’s in hardcover an ebook and an audiobook. I do the, uh, reading of the, of the audiobook. Um, you can get it wherever you get your books. Go to your independent bookstore if you can. Otherwise you can get it online. You can really get it uh, it should be everywhere.

Melody Wilding: Amazing.

Guy Winch: you can follow me on my socials. You can get them through my website as well. I also have a subset newsletter that’s free. So all of that information is through my website.

Melody Wilding: Fantastic guy. Thank you so much.

Guy Winch: Thank you so much for having me.