Hi everyone, it's Madu back in Ola. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.

Thanks so much for having me as your guest host this week. It's been great to share

some ways to use stress to your advantage. Today, let's talk about the link between stress

and feeling otherd. Perhaps you haven't heard the term before, but you've probably felt it

at some point. Essentially, we all have a need to belong, but when we feel left out or excluded,

that can take a toll on how we work, perform, and interact with people. So, I'm going to share

how to recognize and work with feelings of stress when emotions around exclusion come up,

and some ways to create a more inclusive environment. What it means to feel otherd is to feel like

you don't belong, to feel like your voice doesn't matter, to feel like whatever social category that

is making you feel otherd isn't one that's valued and respected. So, let's say, socioeconomically,

you did not grow up skiing, but everyone around you skis. And that matters for the workplace,

because social experiences are important, or you are a creative in an environment where folks

are not as creative, or you are a woman engineer, and we know that in STEM, there are very few women.

And people who, because of their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, or some other factor

that makes them non-mainstream, tend to be more likely to feel otherd in organizations and in life.

When you are feeling otherd, so much of your focus is on that experience, it's like this heavy

weight that you're carrying. And when you're carrying a heavy weight in your head,

that's clearly affecting your performance. You're not able to think as clearly. You're not

able to speak as clearly, because you are constantly wondering and scrutinizing yourself,

and if what you have to say is even good. And so, that's just a cognitive load that is especially

on you that makes performance harder and less effective.

When you're feeling otherd and you're feeling the stress, one of the things I like to remind myself

...