So my name is Francesca and I am so excited to be here in this room with you today.As you can see from the bottom of my screen, my company is named Empowerment League, and what I get to do is I get to work with remote organizations who want to create a culture where their employees feel seen and heard. It's a lot of what we're talking about today, about engagement and how we can listen to our employees, and I get to do that with my clients. And one of the features of my program is wellness and well-being, and that's what we get to talk about today, stress. Because hello from Maryland, Florida, Houston. I am so honored to have you all here. Again, my name is Francesca. I'm just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My company is Empowerment League, and I love what I do.

I love that I get to be able to offer it and share this with you about stress because we have it, and it's here. And as I mentioned, my program, Empowerment League, my organization, pays attention to this because it's in our lives and how we can get around it. So when I started my career, I was told a big lie, a big lie that I needed to work myself to the bone, and I did all of that. I worked endless hours. I gave up weekends. I gave up my social life, and I did so many things, and I did it until I got sick. I got really sick. You see, I'm a recovered CPA. That's a certified public accountant, and that's known as a chartered accountant in Europe, and I'm making that clear because we have some beautiful souls just outside of The United States, and that's known as a chartered accountant.

And while I don't practice accounting anymore, I'm still curious about numbers and the story that the numbers tell. Did you know that ninety percent of all illnesses are caused by stress? Ninety percent. We don't want to feel bad. We just forget what it feels like to feel good. Six in ten employees are burned out. They are wiped out. They're exhausted. And forty percent of them are dealing with super high levels of stress, and that's five percent more than the year before. And you know what stress feels like. Stress is when your alarm clock doesn't go off the day of a huge presentation. Stress is when you need to rearrange your schedule because your kid is sick and, oh, by the way, your aging parent needs your help today, and it's probably on the same day that your alarm clock didn't go off.

Stress is when you get that dreaded phone call about work on the weekend. So much feeling. Stress makes us feel bad. That's the simple answer. It's a feeling. It exhausts us and we really don't want to feel that way. So when I was in accounting, I learned about assets and liabilities. And as I see it today, we all share the same two assets. We do. We have money, and we have time. Now we don't have the same amount of money. Some of us have more money than others, and some of us have less, but we all have it. But we all have the same amount of time. There are one thousand four hundred forty minutes in a day. One four four zero. How many of those minutes do you do you think belong to you? How many of those minutes belong to you? Twelve. Technically speaking, they all belong to you.

All of those minutes belong to you. How many of those minutes do you give to yourself? That's a tough one. You know, there are books, podcasts, webinars, the entire world wide web dedicated showing us ways on how to manage stress, but they don't tell you how to fit it in your life. Right? They don't tell you how to fit it in your life. So what if you gave yourself 1% of the day for yourself back to yourself? Can you settle on giving yourself 1%? Well, what's 1%? That's fourteen point four minutes. Right? My math didn't go away. It's fourteen point four minutes. That's not even fifteen minutes. Can you give yourself fourteen minutes a day? Sure you can. Think of it this way: think of it as a preventative measure like insurance. Insurance is something where we pay into a policy and in the event of a catastrophic event, right, it's there as a preventative protective measure.

Now we all know that's not how insurance works. It's supposed to work that way. Right? But we would like it if insurance works that way. So you get to create your own self insurance policy by giving yourself at least fourteen minutes a day. And all that it takes, though, is practice. We need to practice giving ourselves that time. We are not used to or routine enough in giving ourselves this time, and all that it takes is practice. And I I love to practice. So when I was an undergraduate university, I took a public speaking course. Now public speaking takes practice. I'm sure if you have done any amount of public speaking, you've done some practice. So I had this, public speaking course in undergrad, and our particular assignment one week, the professor said, next week, you need to create a speech of instruction, Meaning, we needed to show the class how to do something.

We needed to bring in something or an idea, and they needed to learn how to do something. And he said, oh, by the way, it needs to apply to everyone in the room, and it needs to apply also to the professor himself. He said, for example, learning how to drive, but you can't use that example. I said, okay. So I was stumped. I said, what can I teach? What do I know that I can show the class that applies to something? And then all of a sudden, it hit me. My sister had just had a baby. She had just had a baby. I'm like, I know. Everyone in the class, they don't have babies, but they might have them someday. They're going to need to know how to ship to change a diaper. Right? They're going to need to know how to change a diaper.

And I have a new niece. I'm going to use her as a prop. So I called up my sister, and I said, hey, Annette. I need you to bring Sandra to campus next Tuesday at 10:00 for my class because I I need an a. And, this is the best idea. I know the professor is going to think so. I was so sassy. She said, what? You want me to bring my baby where? I'm like, please, pretty please. I need an a. This can really help me. This is I can change your diaper. Everybody needs to to know that. Don't you think so? So she's like, do I have to cross the bridge? I'm like, yes, please. Cross the bridge. So yes. You can see where this is going, Christy. So she brings the baby in. Miraculously, she is there on time. So I'm excited.

I have the table all set up, and I have my niece and put her down on the table. As I'm explaining to the class, I'm start to smell something. I'm like, wait a second. Are they cooking broccoli in the cafeteria? Because I didn't know it was broccoli day today. But anyway, I'm chain I'm, like, looking to change the diaper, and I lift it up and oh. Woah. I put the diaper back and I picked up my niece and I gave her back to my sister. I'm like, you finished the job. You guys, epic fail. I failed. I hadn't practiced the poo poo diaper situation, especially in a public venue like a class. Right? Always be ready for the worst. So but I knew the pee pee diaper. Right? Simple, easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

I I knew how to do that, but this poo poo diaper situation, it applies to all of us. Just like it's being said in the chat, prepare for the worst. We need to prepare and get ahead of stress, for example. Right? Preparing our minds by practice. But how do we how do we get this practice in our lives? Right? How do we practice more stress response? How do we strengthen that? Well, FIT. FIT. My framework is is based on an acronym, FOCUS INTENTION THRIVE, and it's based on three levels of awareness where we get to get ahead of stress, where we get to practice, And every element that I'm going to share with you in a few moments, everything is backed by science, and everything is free.

Now you're probably saying, is it really free, Franchesca? Yes. Because really what it costs to us is, time. Sarah, just going to interrupt. I will have takeaway slides at the end, so if you all will hang on and I will offer that as a bonus, You'll have some slides to take with you. I'm just offering my presentation without slides today. Thank you for asking. I'm glad I was able to see that in the chat. So, what I wanna share is the FIT framework, focus, intention, and thrive is how we can practice and how we can make time and give ourselves that 1% per day by getting ahead of stress. With f, that stands for focus, is one way to get ahead of stress and when I speak of focus, I'm speaking of breath focused breathing. Now, focused breathing is scientifically proven that those who practice focused breath think more clearly, have better attention spans, and they can focus better.

They even can sleep better and are more productive, which is incredible that all of that can just be done with focused breath. Now you're all here sitting together in this room. You're all here sitting together in this room breathing. We have to do it. The difference that we should practice is focused breath, and it really helps us get ahead of stress. In fact, that's my favorite takeaway about using focused breath in our lives is that it helps us get ahead of stress. And the way I see it, focused breath is much like pain management. It's much like pain management. Last year, my boyfriend had open heart surgery And with the surgery of as you can well imagine, he was on pain medication. Right?

Pain medication to help him manage the pain. So the day after surgery, I'm in the hospital room with him and in walks nurse Sarah. She says to my boyfriend, Lou, Lou, how's your pain threshold on a scale of one to 10? It's like, oh, I'm at a three. She's like, well, Lou, it's been four hours since her last dose of pain medication. You might wanna take this pain. So this pain medication, pardon. And he's like, Sarah, I'm a tough guy. I work out every single day, and I have a high threshold for pain. I don't need any pain medication. She reminded Lou that he had this tube, this foreign object in his body. She's like, Lou, listen. You're adrenalized right now. You still have some pain medication left in you, but I'm telling you this pain is coming for you.

It is coming for you because of this tube that's in your body, you know, keeping your heart pumping. And she said, taking this medication is going to help you get ahead of stress or ahead of pain. And it's really important that you think about that. They went back and forth. She gave up. She threw up her hands, and she left the room. Now what from what I could see, his pain threshold seemed a little higher than a three. And then over time, in the next hour, he started to squirm and he was uncomfortable. He really he I thought he was higher. I thought he was more like a six. Thankfully, Sarah came back in the room. Hey, Sarah. He said, what do you want?

She's like, Lou, I'm only trying to help you. Take this pain med. I don't wanna see you in pain. I'm just trying to do my job. He's like, look. Don't you understand? I already told you. He went back and forth, back and forth, and she ran out of the room, and I ran after her. I said, please, is there anything that I can do? I know he's more than a three. She's like, look. I'll come back in an hour. I'll see what I can do. My voice comes back in an hour. Look, Lou, I'm trying to help you take this pain medication. And I know that, again, it was higher than a six. It was probably at an eight. And guess what? Thankfully, he took that pain medication. And then he leaned over to me and he said, you know what? I'm really glad I did that.

I'm really glad I took that pain medication because what you should know what you should know is I don't know what I would do without it. What an incredible tool. Right? But let's apply it to what we're talking about here today. Because pain medication doesn't take the pain away. It helps manage it. When we practice focused breath, it doesn't take stress away. Right? Because stress is coming at us in all poo poo diaper directions. We can't take it away, but we can manage it with focused breathing. Yes. So I noticed that someone put 478 breathing in the chat. We are actually going to speak to box breathing today. Box breathing is a simple technique, but it's an important technique to help manage stress that Olympiads use, that the military uses, that executives and leaders like yourselves all sitting here use box breathing.

So I won't be able to see all of you, but I'm going to demonstrate box breathing and then we'll all do it together. So do it in your chair where you are today, and I will guide you through it. But just watch me first. So all that box breathing is, and I'm sure a lot of you have heard of it. Drop a one in the chat if you've heard of box breathing before today. Yes. Christine, Christy, Sarah, Leah, a lot of you have heard it. Right? Do you practice it? Right? This is a stress response builder. Yes. No. But that's okay. So very quickly, I will show you this simple technique, which can become, yes, not as often as I should. So let's do it together.

I will show you, then we'll do it together, and we'll see, like, the immediate the immediate relief that we feel. So we'll inhale for four. We'll hold for four, three, two, one. We will exhale through our nose for four, three, two, one, then we'll hold for four. Okay? Ready? Let's do it together. So everybody inhale for 4321. Hold for 4321. Exhale for 4321. Hold for 4321. Inhale, exhale. Simple technique. Something that you could do when you're not feeling stressed so that when stress comes for you, it helps you manage it just like the pain medication. Drop a one in a chat if you're already starting to feel just a little bit better from yes. Thank you, ladies. Thank you. Right? Simple technique that helps us get ahead of stress. Simple technique because guess what?

Our lives are complicated enough, and this is something that I truly used in this story that I shared with you about Lou's surgery. It's all about making things consistent. That's why I proposed 1%. It's simplistic. Because I believe that a key, the key to a good life is consistency. And when you have consistency of purpose with something like focused breath, it helps you manage stress. It helps you be calm in the moment because when you pile stress on top of stress, if you're already stressed, your reaction is just it's tougher to manage. Right? The next way to get ahead of stress is I for intention. And when I speak of intention, I'm referring to movement, intentional movement. There was a really interesting study just released in March, March 2025. And this study showed and it followed 90,000 participants. It followed 90,000 participants.

And with thirty five minutes of movement per week, they decreased their risk of dementia by forty one percent. Wow. Now thirty five minutes per week, not per day. Incremental movements. One percent per day. What could that look like for you? Could look like scheduling breaks in between calls, getting up from your desk and walking around it, walking around your home if that's where your office is, walking outside. These incremental movements are shown and proven to help us gain clarity and clearer mind. It's this mind body connection that we get to experience. Walking also helps us decrease our blood pressure. It decreases stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol that we could all use less of. Blood pressure drops. It also more importantly, it helps you think more clearly.

If I'm having a day where there's just problem after problem, I really make sure I make the time to get up and take a walk. And it's so fantastic to also do that after a meal because then it helps balance your blood sugar. After lunch or dinner, if you can go walking for a mile, it's fantastic. It it is hard to shut off your brain, so what we can do is take these intermittent breaks to help us. Now, one thing that's really important is leaving your cell phone behind, and this is something that we can embrace as a culture, but it's going to take all of us. Now in Japan, their culture, they practice something called shinrin yoku. That's forest bathing. Drop a one in the chat if you've heard of forest bathing.

It's such a cool concept. Again, it helps relax us. Thank you, Alison. Yes. A number of you have heard of forest bathing. Now I don't live in Japan, but here's what we get to do. Right? Going outside and just seeing greenery, seeing the trees, and immersing yourself in nature again without the cell phone without the cell phone, breathing in the fresh air, just listening to nature, birds, just inhaling, using all of your senses in that immersion really helps you modify your stress response.

So what I love about walking is it's simple and if you're able to do it, I highly encourage it. The other thing that I think is cool, has anybody ever heard of DBS? DBS. That stands for dead butt syndrome. It's actually a thing. It's gluteal narcolepsy, gluteal amnesia. Our body falls asleep if we don't move it. Right? We're moving our mind. We're not moving our body. Right? So it's important to keep our body moving. You know, as kids, when we were kids, our only responsibility was movement. That's all that we had to do. We got to play at home. We got to play in the school yard. We got to play all the time. That's the only thing we had to worry about. Then we became adults. And then we have to be now intentional with our movement.

Perhaps we need to schedule breaks and have a timer go off on our laptop or cell phone so that we get up and remember to get up because we get immersed in our work. Let's get immersed in nature and back to our minds and bodies and move perhaps in a way that, you know, helps you think more clearly. In fact, walking makes you smarter. There's scientific proof. And if I were to take a scan of your brain before a walk and after a walk, you would see this incredible amount of blood flow going through your body, going through your mind, pardon your brain. And it increases this ability to clear your mind, which, you know, we're we are multitasking. And what I'm suggesting with this 1% today is simplify, simplify, simplify with just 1%, with just fourteen minutes.

Now if you don't do these things, you're not going to be kicked out of your life. And if you don't start today, you can start tomorrow. And if you don't start tomorrow, you start the next day. You don't have to wait for January 1 to start again and to have a new fresh beginning because every day is a new day to have a fresh beginning. You don't even have to wait until Monday. Shoot. Today is Tuesday. Tomorrow's Wednesday. You can have Wednesday. You don't have to be Monday to be that start of your new focused breathing, or I'm going to try and walk for two minutes today. But here's the thing. We what we want to do is amplify the good stress. And did you know that there's good stress and bad stress? There's good stress and bad stress.

Drop a one in the chat if you knew that there was a difference. So what we'll do is talk about on the end, it's fourteen consecutive minutes. It can be five minutes. You can go for a walk for five minutes and do focus breathing for five minutes and then you don't have to do fourteen consecutive minutes. You can always break it down. So thank you for the question, Christy. But the good stress and the bad stress, we know what good stress does. Right? For those of you who have, dropped a one in the chat, it it increases our immunity. It uplevels our immunity. Right? Good stress is exercise, walking, things like a cold plunge, things like hot sauna. Right?

They increase our immunity and they make us feel good and we know what bad stress is. Right? We talked about it. We know what it feels like. It feels awful. Bad stress drains us and bad stress decreases our immunity, which is why ninety percent of all illnesses are caused by stress. Right? So it's thinking about how we can best manage that. But what I see is people putting limits on the good stress and not limits on the bad stress. Hear me out. Oh, I have my 10,000 steps in today. I'm done. Or I've I've walked all that I need to do today or I've taken enough breaks today. We put limits on the bad stress pardon, limits on the good stress, but not on the bad stress. And that's another offer that I'd like to make to you today is how can we put limits on that bad stress? How can we do that?

Now all of us, we have individual lives and things that drain us, but is there something we can say no to today? Maybe it's a 1% decision that we can say no to to increase our stress. Yes. Yes, Janine. Saying no and setting boundaries helps limit that bad stress and flipping it up. Christy, we we all need work at boundaries, and thank you for saying that. I appreciate your vulnerability. It is really hard to say no, But maybe little by little we can get there. The third way to get ahead of stress is to thrive. Right? And when I speak of thrive, I speak of thriving through meditation. Now hear me out. The three elements I'm sharing with you today are just one element for each letter of the FIT framework.

That's what we're focus focusing on today, focused breathing, intentional movement, and now thriving through meditation. And there are other ways to practice. But meditation is scientifically proven to be an immediate stress reducer, immediate stress reducer. In fact, those of you who might know Tim Ferriss, he's a famous author in The United States. He's also a famous podcaster. When he was doing research for his book, Tools of the Titans, he found that 80% of leaders successful leaders and executives meditate. Now if we look at 80% of the room today, I'm giving you applause because 80% of you meditate. So what I often hear is I can't do it. It's not for me. I tried it, and it doesn't work. There are no absolutes.

It is something to start and start again because we have so many thoughts that come through our minds that we're trying to control. So perhaps what we need to do is focus on our breathing, and then if a thought comes in, try and go back to focus spread. That you're building a neural pathway every single time you go back to your breath. That's the beautiful thing about meditation, by the way, is that you only have to focus on one thing. The hard thing is that you can only focus on one thing. Right? That's the tough part and the tough piece. So, what worked for me, meditation there thank you. Uh-oh. You're asking, someone else in the chat. But there are lots of meditations out there. There with words, without words, with music, you know, no music.

There are tons of meditation on YouTube available for free or not. It's all a matter of you understanding what works best for you. Yes. The Calm app is an incredible app. Thank you for suggesting that, Laura. There is a lot of resources. It's a matter of practice. It's a matter of giving yourself that time and figuring out when that works for you. And as I mentioned, it's scientifically proven, and I use myself as my own science experiment. So as I mentioned to you, Lou, my boyfriend, had open heart surgery last year. So he came home on a Saturday. And on Monday, mister tough guy decided that he needed to work again. Mind you, he was in the hospital all week.

He was still on medication, but he wanted to set up his laptop at the kitchen table. I felt like nurse Sarah that I was in for a flight, but then I took a deep breath. And I said, you know what? I'm going to I'm going to give him time. He's he's a big boy. He's a tough boy. He's going to figure it out. So I left the room, and within a few minutes, I hear a big crash. His head hit the floor. I ran down the steps through the house and into the kitchen and found Lou on his hands and knees. And what I saw there, I was shaking. I was shaking, and he had just passed out because what happened was his eyes were rolling behind his head. His eyelids were fluttering. I know this. He passed out.

So I got him seated, immediately call 911, and they were like, is he breathing? Is he is he breathing? I'm like, yes. Please get here immediately. I don't know what's happening. He just left the hospital forty eight hours ago. So what seemed like days, which all of you can understand as you're waiting for EMT and emergency, it feels like days. So the EMT picks him up. We go to the hospital from which he came just forty eight hours ago, and I follow the ambulance to the hospital. I get there and the driver comes out and said, Francesca, you can't park here. You you need to move your car. And I'm like, oh my god. She said, oh, and by the way, he keeps going in and out. Like, oh, great.

Move my car, get back into the ER, and there he is in front of me. And then I see the heart monitor and this awful noise erupting. Beep. Beep. He was flatlining. Absolutely terrifying. Absolutely terrifying to watch. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. So doctors, nurses asking us questions. Remember, I needed a clear mind because he couldn't talk. I was the talker. What did he eat for breakfast? Woman who's this doctor? Where do you live? What did he eat for breakfast? Who's this doctor? Where do you live? Over and over and over, same three questions. I left the room. I needed to ground myself because I knew that I needed to think clearly. Deep breath. A couple of times, box breathing, back into the room. As soon as I get back in there, they wheel him away immediately. And they said, look. We need to install a pacemaker to save Lou's life.

You need to go in the waiting room, and we will come find you. I go in the waiting room. I'm ready to shove 17 snacks down my throat. I get what I can. I go to the waiting room. I just want a quiet space, and the woman next to me, she's already found her snacks and she's chomping away. I'm like, I can't breathe. I can't meditate. I don't know what to do. I find a quiet corner. I see a doctor come in the room, and I jump up. Nope. Not lose doctor. I jump up again, and I apologize. My camera has, gone fuzzy. I'm going to turn it off and turn it back on to get clear. So doctor comes in. He's like, you can come with me now. So I go see Lou. Hey. Does it hurt? Are you okay? He looked up at me and he said, I'm starving.

Can you get me something to eat? I'm like, thank goodness. He's good. So pull out Uber Eats, looking at the, what I can order my tough guy, steak and potatoes, by the way, trying to find an Uber Eats that I can deliver. So near the hospital, and in walks a pulmonologist. Yes. A lung doctor, not a cardiologist, a pulmonologist. And he says to us, well, Lou, your pacemaker procedure installation was successful. However, we poked a hole in your lung during the procedure. I'm like, is there anything else? Deep breath. Okay. So he has to stay in the hospital a few more days. I leave. After we get him a room, I go home, and I just feel my feelings. I just let go. I breathe and feel. And then I felt alone.

So I'm like, I I I need to call my friend. I'll talk to her. I'll feel better because I need to process this and and talk about it. So I called my friend, and she's like, oh my god. Oh my god. Are you stressed? You're stressed. You have to be stressed. You have to be stressed. I'm stressed. I'm like, no. I'm good. I'm good. I was practiced. I was rehearsed. Now I'm not saying I didn't allow the feelings, but what I got to do with time and time again of of, you can say, preparing, practicing for this, I felt much better than I would have had I not. Focus, intention, thrive. It's simple, and that's intentional. By giving yourself just 1% a day, you'll think more clearly and you'll feel better. By allowing yourself to practice, you'll make better decisions for you, yourself, and your family because that that's what life is about. That's what life is about.

Your life will get 100% better, and all that you have to do is practice. Thank you. So, again, my camera went out. And what I'm going to share with you, I'm going to share my screen, my friends, and I'd like for you to scan. I wanna change the size of this, but you should be able to scan that QR code. It works. Thank you. So when you scan that code, I my bonus is this, my friends, quickly, and then I'll look at some questions through the chat. I'm hosting a thirty minute follow-up where we can continue this conversation and perhaps talk about additional elements that you can put into practice, how you can talk, how you can put it into practice, and how I can continue to support you. So please, you know, follow me on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn, and leave me a message saying, oh, I just, you know, watched your session. Let's connect.

I would love to stay in touch with all of you and, again, offer this bonus to all of you.