Professor Pete Alexander inspires hard-driving leaders and other working professionals with over 100 innovative and effective stress relief strategies that help overcome their self-imposed obstacles and barriers to success. A seasoned professional with over 35 years of Sales, Marketing, and Entrepreneurial experience, Pete has battled the negative effects of stress head-on and has developed a trademarked stress relief model that motivates his peers to take action in only a few minutes per day. To experience immediate stress relief for yourself, please review Pete’s video blog series or his Amazon international best-selling book to learn more.
His friendly, humorous demeanor and customized approach relates well to his audiences, ensuring meeting planners get full value for their organizations. Pete also hosts a popular 7-minute podcast and has been a frequent guest on other podcasts and radio shows.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Professor Pete Alexander about reducing stress and using a book to build credibility.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- Why some stress is good for us and motivates us get things done.
- How negative stress has two flavors and how they hold you back.
- How a world of possibilities opens up when you look at things as if you can’t fail.
- How book authorship is like having a business card on steroids.
- Why cutting out stress is the real-life fountain of youth.
Connect with Pete:
Links Mentioned:
petealexander.com
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here. Excited to bring you a friend and a great guest to our Publish Promote Profit podcast today. It is Pete Alexander, affectionately known as Professor Pete and so great to have him here today. Professor Pete is the best-selling author of, Lighten Your Day: Fast, Easy, And Effective Stress Relief When Stuff Happens, and also the podcast host of Winning at Business and Life. Professor Pete owns a couple of very, very successful businesses. He will talk more about the stress relief, and coaching, and speaking, and that part of your business today. Pete, great to have you here and thanks for being on with me today.
Pete Alexander:
Well, Rob, thank you so much for having me on the show and I really appreciate the listeners’ time as well.
Rob Kosberg:
I want to dive into the stress relief because for a lot of people, the last year has been stressful. You got a global pandemic, there’s all kinds of financial challenges and difficulties that certainly some industries have had. I consider myself really, really blessed because our company is just fantastic. In some ways, COVID has been a blessing in disguise for us, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it was without its stress. What are some ways that people can get some stress relief when stuff happens in their life?
Pete Alexander:
It’s interesting that you say that. First, I want to just point out about the whole thing and mention about the pandemic. The interesting thing is the World Health Organization called stress the number one health epidemic of the 21st century and COVID got all the attention for the last year plus. But, think about this. When we finally get to the point where we’re past that, whether that’s the next few months, whether it’s beginning of next year, whenever it happens to be, where we think, “Okay, that’s in our rear view mirror,” what is still going to be around? It’s going to be stress and what COVID has caused us. The key is to remember that we are going to be dealing with stress regardless of what challenges come up. One of the keys that I find that people have to think about is, not all stress is negative. There’s positive stress and there’s negative stress. Positive stress is where if you’re doing something that you love, like it’s clear that with a bestseller publishing, you do what you love. You always bring that passion to whatever video, whatever webinar you do. It’s clear that you have that. The positive stresses are the things that help us get things done. If you have deadlines regarding stuff that you enjoy, that’s positive stress and that’s not going to negatively affect you. However, the negative stress comes in two different flavors; it’s either rumination, which is worrying about something in the past. Let’s say you’re guilty about doing something or not doing something, and you let that fester. Well, guess what? It’s in the past. You can’t do anything about it. If you keep letting that fester, it’s just going to gnaw at you and it’s a negative stress. The other flavor is thinking about something that you’re anxious about in the future that may or may not happen. The thing that is always amazing to me is that when you worry about something in the future, when you’re fearful about something in the future and you worry, often you manifest that worry. It turns out negative because you kept thinking about it. Unfortunately, that energy, that negative energy that you send out to the future is going to backfire on you. One of the great things that I like to talk about with people is the fact that when it comes to anxiety, it’s almost all based on fear. What happens is that most of our stress these days is mental. The crazy thing is, most of our mental stress is self-induced. We do it to ourselves, such as being anxious about something in the future. Instead of being in that stuck state of fear, what I always like to ask people to do is, instead of worrying about that fearful thing, ask yourself the following question, “What would it look like if I knew I couldn’t fail?” Think about that from a real positive standpoint instead of the stuck state of fear over being anxious about an interview, or a difficult conversation, or about starting your own business, or whatever it happens to be, or writing your book. Asking yourself that positive question opens up the world of possibilities. This works for any age. I asked my youngest son when he was 18, and he had just graduated high school, and he went into this whole negative thing about not knowing what he wanted to do, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” I said, “Don’t answer that right now. I want you to think about it overnight.” The next day he came back to me and first he says, “You know dad, that was a really interesting question,” and he came back with three completely off-the-wall ideas, and that was three years ago, and he is pursuing one of those three right now. It just took all of that stress off of his shoulders. It’s just a simple question. That’s the thing that people don’t realize. I know that we’re all stressed for time, but what’s really interesting is it only takes finding one or two techniques that you can utilize on a daily basis hopefully, or whenever you need, and if you do that, the compound benefits over time will be enormous.
Rob Kosberg:
What’s a one-minute exercise that we can do, or technique, to relieve some stress?
Pete Alexander:
Oh, absolutely. This can be done anywhere except if you’re driving in traffic. So, let’s say that you pull up in front of whatever the building is that, if you have got an interview, or if you’ve got this important sales call, or let’s say you’re going on a first date with somebody you’re nervous about, what you do is you close your eyes and I want you to go in your mind to a place you like to relax. Maybe it’s the beach. Maybe it’s a park. Maybe it’s a lake. Maybe it’s your backyard. Maybe it’s the spa. Wherever it happens to be, go there in your mind and take in all of your senses. What do you feel? Do you feel the sun on your face? Maybe the sand or the grass under your feet? What do you smell? Do you smell the fresh air? Maybe the lotion from the spa. What do you hear? Do you hear the wind blowing through the trees, maybe the water splashing on shore? What do you see? Do you see the blue sky? Maybe the green of the trees or the grass? Whatever it is, take it all in and then take a nice deep breath and open your eyes.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, I wasn’t stressed before, but I feel great now.
Pete Alexander:
It can be done anywhere, and it took less than a minute to do that. You just go to your happy place. It’s interesting because you can do this wherever, as long as you have one minute of solitude. It just works really easy and you don’t have to have anything around.
Rob Kosberg:
I know you have other businesses and you’re very successful, but it’s not like your businesses revolve around teaching people about stress relief. What was the thing that initiated that desire to write that book too? Was it dealing with your own stresses in business and life? What started you on this journey?
Pete Alexander:
Stress and I have had almost a lifetime relationship with each other, but where it really started becoming significant for me was in my mid-forties. It was 2008 and I had a perfect storm of stressful activities happening. My dad was dying, and he needed all of his affairs to be taken care of. I was running the business and I had small kids that needed to have my attention. My mom decided to have major hip surgery and she didn’t have the insurance for the follow-up care. Also, by the way, my marriage was heading for a divorce. There were just a few things going on. What happened was, about 30 days before I was checked, I started losing weight and I lost 30 pounds in 30 days. At first, I’m thinking, “Wow, this is great. I’m not doing any special dieting. I’m doing my regular exercise and it’s just coming off. I can eat my Oreos.” It kept coming off. Once that 30th pound came off, I thought, “I’d better get some blood work done and see what what’s going on.” Sure enough, I got diagnosed with stress induced diabetes. The crazy thing is, there’s not anyone in my family tree who has diabetes other than one cousin. There’s really no diabetes in the family and yet what happened was, I get this diagnosis and I didn’t listen to my body about what stress was doing to it. Instead, I did like many of us entrepreneurs do. I kept burning the candle at both ends for another 10 years. In 2018, I ended up in the emergency room with a severe case of diabetic ketoacidosis. Basically, my body was eating itself alive because of my stress. The doctors told me I was one hour from being comatose. I literally was green, and I got transferred after they stabilized me. I had to take in over six liters of fluid and I didn’t ever pee. That’s how dehydrated I was. They transferred me to ICU for several days. I had never been in an ICU. On my second day in ICU, I had gone back to the corporate world and I was working on a very high-profile project. I got this text from my boss at about 6:00 AM and it says, “You have a webinar you need to run at 8:00. What are you going to do about it?” My boss knew that I was in the ICU and I didn’t have my work laptop with me. So, there I am sitting there trying to reschedule this from my phone, my iPhone and every half an hour to 45 minutes they were checking my blood. When I was admitted to the hospital, my blood sugars were so high that the medical grade glucometers could not read it; all it said was high.
Pete Alexander:
They estimated that I was between 8 and 10 times higher than I was supposed to be. My numbers had come down into more reasonable settings at that point, still a little bit high, but at least reasonable and so she goes, and she checks my blood and it was like this 90-degree angle. It just shot up. A complete stranger, a nurse, she says to me, “You realize,” as she was seeing me doing my phone, “that’s what put you in this hospital bed in the first place.” That was the epiphany moment. It was like, “What am I doing? I am trading my health for my career.” That is a very bad trade. I did a lot of thought-provoking considerations for that next couple of days that I was in the hospital. I realized at that point, I had managed my money fine and I really didn’t want to do this anymore. The day after I got out of the hospital, I called my boss, resigned, and then I started applying any kind of stress relief tool or technique that I could find. What I found was that, not only did my stress go down as I was applying these tools, my glucose numbers went down. My weight went down and my energy level went way, way up. It was like I had found the fountain of youth. If you look at pictures of me from 2008 when I was first diagnosed with stress induced diabetes and pictures of me now, I actually look younger and I haven’t done any cosmetic work. The crazy thing is that your body can regenerate itself in many cases. You’ve just got to realize that. My former coworkers, friends, family, they said, “You ought to write a book.” That’s what I decided to do. Your company did a great job helping me make that a reality.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you for that word and what an incredible story. You hear about people working themselves to death and the negative impact of stress in people’s lives, but it seemed to be to such a critical point in yours that it just became life or death, super obvious. I’m really glad you wrote the book. Let’s change gears for a minute if we could and talk a little bit about it. You wrote the book like most authors do with the idea of making an impact on people and helping people with your knowledge and your wisdom and what it is that you almost died to receive, but the book is also written for you. You had your own goals for the book. I’d like to talk for a few minutes. The book’s done very, very well and it’s been super well received. What have you gotten from the book? How has the book helped grow your authority, maybe get you opportunities to speak or PR media or to sell and make some money in business?
Pete Alexander:
Well, what it really has done, when you have a book that you can just hold up like this, there is as you say this level of authority. It’s a huge credibility builder. This is not the first book that I wrote. This is the best book that I’ve written, but it’s not the first one. What happens is, people will pay attention to you. For me, what I wanted to do was, after this happened to me, I really thought to myself, “I’ve been given this opportunity to share about what is dangerous about working yourself almost to death or to death in some cases,” because unfortunately I know people that have ended up in that case. I wanted to get the word out. Well, had I just said, “Oh, you know what? I burned out at my job and stuff. Can I talk to your organization,” or, “Can I come on your podcast and stuff?” I would say, if I tried to do that, 95 to 99%, would have rejected me but the fact that I had an Amazon best-selling book and that I could send a copy of that book if they needed that, that opened doors and I’ve been on so many podcasts and other interviews, not only in the US but all over the world. I’ve had the opportunity to speak in front of many, many different organizations, all because that book became a real thing. It is a business card on steroids. That’s what it really is and having the process that BSP took me through was so much better than the way I wrote books before. I was working with not only an editor, but also with somebody that was reviewing what I was writing. You get a blinders on a lot of times as an author and you think, “This is what people need to hear,” but when you have somebody who is giving you the opinion that’s based on what the market needs, that is so powerful and it really, it exceeded my expectations. It really did. Each time that I look at that book and each time that I talk about that book, as I mentioned earlier that you have the passion for your company and stuff, I really have the passion for that book. Even though I have a PhD dissertation that was published by the University of Michigan, I look at that book as my crowning moment, not that other book.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s really cool, Pete. I love that story. I’m really glad that I asked you and glad to hear what initiated you writing the book because I didn’t know all the details of that. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for your trust in me and BSP in bringing this message to life. Obviously, this is something that can help a whole lot of people because stress is not going away. In fact, I am afraid to say that I think the coming months and years are going to be far more stressful than COVID was because we’re going to be dealing with the financial ramifications. There’ve been people who haven’t been making their rent payments, their mortgage payments, and most of those programs are shutting down and there are going to be foreclosures and all kinds of challenges that people are facing. A book like yours, I think, is super, super needed. Thanks for being on today. Tell us where people can get a copy of the book. Where can they learn more about what it is you do? Let’s give them some links.
Pete Alexander:
They can go and find all of that actually on my website, which is petealexander.com. The podcast is there. The book is there. Stress ideas are there. So, by all means, please visit my website and I’d be happy to engage with the audience if they’d like to talk to me. I’m also on LinkedIn. So, reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Thank you, my friend. Great to be with you as always. Congratulations on all your success and stay stress free, my friend.
Pete Alexander:
Rob, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and the listeners’ time as well. I hope it was helpful.
