00:00:00
What is up, friend? Thank you so much for being here. And when I say friend, I mean it because someday I hope that with all of my podcast listeners, we get to work out together, have a yummy treat together, and then talk about women's health and mom life and all of the things that we talk about on the podcast. Someday we're going to do a meet up. Someday today we're going to be talking about stress and anxiety, be and managing those.
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And I'm leaning a little bit more into stress today. I want to start by saying I am not an expert at this subject. I am not a guru at stress and anxiety management. I am just like anybody else and I have struggles with it as well, among other things. So some of the stuff I'm going to share with you today are things that I'm working on myself.
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It's things that I'm focusing on and things that I have found help me personally in my own journey. And I have learned that when I share the things that have helped me in my journey, I'm able to help other people. Just like when other people share the things in their journey that they've struggled with, they help me. Because the truth is, all boats rise together when we share our experiences with others, including our struggles and being real for a moment. I think sometimes on social media, all we see is perfection.
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Which is why I'm very open about the fact that I have ADHD, I've had experience with anxiety, I have stress in my life. And you know what? I've had bouts of depression. I have an entire episode telling a story about when I struggled with depression and my experience with that. So I have no shame in admitting some of these things because it actually connects us as friends.
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And when other people are struggling with this, I hope they think back to this episode and they add in some of the stuff that we are going to talk today about. And the things that I'm going to tell you are actually really simple because my life is crazy. I mean, cray cray, it is a zoo. So I have to simplify things and think of down to earth, simple ways to make things work in all aspects. And that is what I'm going to be focusing on today as I explain stress, as I explain the different stress levels, and I explain what to do about it and how to recognize where you are and how to cope with it.
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And if you learned something in this episode, if it makes you feel empowered or you know someone who is struggling with stress or anxiety, please send them this episode. We can spread the word. We can help others. Tag me in it, put it on social media, send it to your friends and family. And as always, if you find it helpful as well, leave a review where you listen.
00:02:40
I read those every single week. They make such a difference for the podcast. They help us grow and they help give me the energy to keep talking to you every week. And they just make me so happy. Today, I want to give a little shout out to McDowell Wife.
00:02:53
It's titled Look Forward to this podcast each week. I love listening to the podcast each week. It's like I'm talking with a friend who has tons of knowledge to share. She finds guests who can answer my real life questions and makes sure to give actionable steps so that I can apply to things they discuss. Can't recommend this podcast enough.
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Thank you so much. McDowell wife. And I am so with you. I feel like we learned together, which is what I just talked about. If you learn tiny steps in this that you can apply, share it with your friends.
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And if you have a guest that you want me to have on, or even a topic, if you go to the show Notes, there's now a link where it says submit a topic or submit a guest. And we have a filler where you can enter that information. And then I look at it every week. And so I'm getting now topic ideas and guest ideas from you because I want you to hear from, who you want to hear from and I want to talk about things that are going to make you better and make me better as I research them so we can do this together and feel more equipped to handle life in all aspects, especially health and fitness, including mental health and motherhood and all the things we have on our plate. So let's get into today's episode about managing stress and giving you simple ideas to make it actionable.
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My name is Andrea Allen , and I am a mother of four girls under seven, a wifey to a mountain man, a personal trainer, and a nutrition coach. I love all things in women's health and fitness, but let's face it, the fitness industry is complicated and it's not built for the everyday mom. There's so much conflicting information and you're busy and you don't have time to figure it out. I hate feeling confused and overwhelmed, so I have made it my mission to simplify health and fitness while creating a welcoming, realistic, and empowering home for like minded women. I'm happy you're here, and I hope you stay awhile.
00:04:46
So, as I said, this episode was actually born from my own experience in dealing with stress. Obviously, everyone experienced stress and the levels vary, which we're going to talk about today, and there are even different forms and different types of stress that can be good for us or bad for us. But in the very beginning of 2021, my business was growing very quickly. I love helping women, I love humor, and I love teaching. So I have kind of mixed it all together on my social media handle, which is deliciously, fit and healthy.
00:05:20
And then in the podcast and I was coaching clients as well. And I have four little girls and in the beginning of 2021, they just were very little. I mean, I had a three year old, I had a five year old, and then we had the twins who at that point were, I think seven. So it was just a lot going on and I was overwhelmed. I was really, really overwhelmed.
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And during this time I just had too many things on my plate. I wasn't staffed correctly with people helping me. I was doing most of my editing for different things. I just had way too much going on. And during this time I developed an autoimmune disease, which I never talk about very much, but I was told by doctors it was probably developed because my stress level was high.
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My personality is kind of funny, where I can go, go. If I see a problem, it will be on my mind and it will just repeat until I can figure out how to fix it and make it better. So if I see a gap in information, I will think about it, I will research it, I will dig so deep in it. My husband teases me. He's like, you fall into black holes all the time.
00:06:29
And I do because I like to learn and then I can fix the issue and then I like to share it. But during this time, there was so much going on. I developed that autoimmune and the doctors basically said it's probably because of stress and I do have it under control now, but it still flares up if I let my stress get out of control. So because of this, I have worked very hard to control my stress over the last, I would say year and a half. It's about been almost two years and it's definitely improved.
00:07:00
And I've learned a lot of this through coping skills. So first, let's start with two kinds of stress. There are two different kinds of stress and one of them is actually pretty good. It's called you stress. And that is a normal amount of stress that actually motivates us.
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It actually helps us stay focused and helps us achieve our goals. It's basically like a healthy tension in our life. It actually also helps us perform better. So imagine stress like a hill, like a giant curve, so it starts at the bottom and then it rises and then goes down. You stress is good stress, as I mentioned, and that's all on the side going up the hill.
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But when you get to the peak of the hill, we're still very productive on that side. But then we can go into bad stress on the other side of the hill, which then becomes negative and starts impacting us negatively. And that is called distress, which is a more extreme stress. It's normally carried longer. So you stress is like short term small stress which we move on from.
00:08:00
And when stress gets bad, it's more extreme. It's carried for too long and it activates the fight or flight response regularly. And not only regularly but for long periods of time. The purpose of the fight or flight was imagine a caveman and a bear came to get him and it was short term and he ran and that was that. But there's many situations now where we're staying in this fight or flight for hours and days and weeks and it's causing us so many different problems because of the cortisol levels and so many other things.
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So it's really important to recognize the difference. And that not all stress is bad. Some of it actually really motivates us. But we have to watch that it doesn't hit the top of that hill and curve into the negative stress. And if it does that, we focus with our coping skills or maybe reaching out for help to get back into the good part of stress.
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So look at it this way. Destress is the stress that negatively affects us and you stress is the stress that positively affects us. So you may be thinking now, okay, great, there's two kinds. How do I tell where I am, how do I tell what's not good? I'm going to give you a couple of ways to recognize what stress you're under and then what to do about it.
00:09:13
So I want you to go back to that hill. I talked about imagining stress as a hill. And once you get to the top of the hill and you go into the bad stress, there's different zones of stress and it can be helpful and hurtful. And on my social media page for the podcast, it's make it simple podcast. I'm going to put a visual for this so you can see what I'm talking about, this hill with the different zones of stress.
00:09:36
And then I'm also going to include some of this information. So if you're a visual learner, because I'm a visual learner, don't worry, follow that podcast page and we will have a visual for this for you. But I'm going to describe these different zones of stress so that you can be aware and check in with yourself daily at where you are and try to adjust with some of these coping skills we're going to talk about. So the first part of that hill is the green zone, which is the very beginning of that hill. We're starting to rise.
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Stress in the green zone is very moderate. It's normally short term. It helps us focus. We can take tests or get tasks done or work on a small project. It motivates us and it's a great stage to keep us moving forward in this zone, typically signs of it are you're pretty confident, you're content, you're ready to meet challenges, you're able to get along with others and you're performing pretty well.
00:10:29
This is a really great zone to be in is that green zone. Now as we shift from the green zone we kind of hit that peak and as we start to go over that hill there's going to be a yellow zone for stress. And yellow zone is when the pressure of the stress starts building. So we're starting to not care for ourself as well. Our self care suffers.
00:10:52
We become a little bit more irritable. We're more tired, we have more aches and pains. We might start to have sleeping problems and our focus is declining. So we're having a harder time concentrating. Typically in this yellow zone, like I said, it's right over that cusp from the green zone we become a little bit more tense.
00:11:13
We're a little bit more concerned or more worried. It's also where people can be a little bit more insecure because I think they don't feel as much in control because they're just overly stressed and they're spread thin. We can have difficulty connecting with others here and imagine as I said, that stress as coming on the other side of the hill. You're just barely over that hill. So we can use some of the coping skills we're going to talk about to just push yourself back to the good side.
00:11:39
Yellow stress is normal. Like this level is normal to go into like it really is, but you just don't want to stay in it forever. But you will go into it normally and that's okay. We just want to move back to the good one. The next zone of stress on our hill is we've gone over the green, over the tip of the hill, we've gone through the yellow and we're starting to shift into the orange.
00:12:02
No one really enjoys being in the orange zone. It's a level of stress where it's not permanent but it's in between the yellow and red where we're starting to have things stick around a little bit longer and the stress is starting to weigh us down even more. Typically we start to feel exhausted in this phase, physically and emotionally we start to feel exhausted. You might also start to feel overwhelmed or notice that you start to get upset stomach issues and other aches and pains and have difficulty just trying to stay positive. You might easily anger in this zone as well because when you're spread thin and someone distracts you and you're already having a hard time focusing, you kind of snap on people.
00:12:48
So in this zone you're more easily angered and you're just a little bit more typically discouraged because you're overwhelmed with stress. The last zone that you go into as you've come over that hill, we've now gone through green, yellow, orange and now we're in the red zone of stress. So we've gone from the you stress which is good, and now we are in the far extreme of destress the red zone. We do not want to be in the red zone. The red zone is where we're constantly overwhelmed.
00:13:18
We're feeling isolated. We start to feel hopeless because that when overwhelm keeps building, building. It turns to hopelessness because you can't really see any other option. In this red zone, we often have difficulty eating. Either we're undereating or we're overeating to compensate because we're just feeling not like ourselves and we have difficulty sleeping in this red zone.
00:13:41
I'm going to give you a couple other examples. I'm going to give you some emotional examples, some cognitive so, like some mental examples and then even some physical examples because I think it's really important to recognize this and check in with yourself. So some other signs of being in the red zone emotionally is, as I mentioned, you're more irritable. So imagine all of this building from the green all the way to the red. You're more irritable, you have more anxiety, you fear, you worry.
00:14:07
You're even more overwhelmed. There might be a lot of sadness, loss and pleasure of things you enjoyed, even depression and hopelessness. Mentally, you might have a hard time retaining information that you've heard or read. You can be a lot more forgetful. You can have repetitive thoughts, poor concentration, disorganized, and just a lower quality of work.
00:14:30
If you're working or things you normally do your tasks, the quality is just lower because you're forgetful physically. You might have body tension. You might have frequent illnesses or stomach aches, more sleep disturbances, diarrhea or even constipation. The fatigue and the exhaustion don't become just every once in a while or a couple of times. It becomes daily.
00:14:52
And you might have headaches or just vague random aches and pains. And again, your appetite will change. I want you to think of these zones, the green zone, the yellow zone, the orange and the red. Where are you spending most of your time? Really think about it.
00:15:08
And again, I'll put that visual on social media so you can look at it and really think of the signs and symptoms. And I will link that in the show notes as well. But where are you spending your time? Are you bouncing in the green and yellow zone, which is pretty normal, even going into the orange sometimes, but then going back to the green zone, that's okay, that's pretty normal. Or are you living more in the yellow, orange and the red zone, where you're bouncing from the red zone to only the yellow zone and you're never actually coming out of that destress zone.
00:15:41
In general, no matter where you're living, most of us will have phases where we do go into that yellow, orange and even red zone. And if we have coping mechanisms, small things we can do in the moment. These are not big things, but tiny things to shift from our sympathetic system to our parasympathetic. The parasympathetic system is our nervous system that helps calm us. So there's normally tiny coping things we can do to calm us down.
00:16:08
Now, I will say if you're someone who, as I've mentioned, all these things, you're thinking, man, I am living in orange and red every day, day in, day out. I do encourage you to reach out for professional help. It makes a huge difference. I am a massive believer in therapy. I worked for a mental health company for five years right after college as a health guide, and we would set up therapy appointments for people, and it made such a difference in their ability to shift their thinking patterns.
00:16:41
I mean, we use personal training all the time for our bodies, and we put our kids in athletics and we have them get a coach and we make sure they have a good coach because we want them to learn and we want them to perform athletically. Yet do we even do that for our own mental health? Are we taking care of our own mental health by seeing you can call it a mental health coach or just going to therapy. So if you're really struggling in those zones, I highly encourage you to see a therapist. They have them online now, even where you don't even have to go in talk space.
00:17:12
Talk space is another one online. So if you can't find anyone in person but if you're thinking, okay, maybe I need extra help, or maybe you don't either. With both of those options, coping skills is going to make a huge difference as well, because those are the tiny things you're going to do day in and day out to help improve your overwhelm. And those tiny things are going to add up. And I can tell you for myself, they make a huge difference.
00:17:36
And I actually do every single one of the ones I'm going to point out for you today. In fact, I pick them because I'm like, no, these work for me. And I've tested a ton of them and I love them. So that's what I'm going to share. And I have eight of these coping skills for you, and they're all going to be simple.
00:17:52
My first tip and my first skill is going to be take note of your senses. Literally, you have five senses. No matter what's going on in the moment, if you're feeling overly anxious, if you're feeling like, oh, I'm way out of the green zone, I am in the yellow, orange, red zone. I just feel like I'm about to combust. Stop what you're doing and I want you to, in the exact moment, come to the presence and think about what do you smell around you if you're standing outside?
00:18:20
Maybe you smell flowers. Maybe you're sitting in your car and you're like, there's definitely, like, some food left under my chair. I don't know. Whatever it is, it doesn't even have to be positive. Just think about what you're smelling.
00:18:32
Maybe you have a freshener in your car, maybe in your house. You're noticing you can smell a piece of fruit. It doesn't matter. But I want you to literally smell what am I smelling right now? I want you to think, what am I seeing?
00:18:47
Look around. Look at what you see. Look at your kids faces. Look out the window. Look around the house.
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It doesn't even matter if it's messy. Find a plant in the corner. I don't care if you can't even see the floor of your house. I don't even care. Look at a plant in the corner and take note of the leaves.
00:19:03
What color are they? Do they have a texture? Do they have a different look? Look at a different plant. Really, really simple.
00:19:09
I want you to pay attention to what you feel. Often you can think about uneasy ideas. What does the grass feel under my feet when I do this? I'll often think like what do my toes feel like in my shoes? I'll feel my socks in my shoes.
00:19:24
And I'll just think, what does that feel like? How does my top feel on me? Am I sitting on a chair? Does the chair have ridges in it? Or is it kind of soft?
00:19:32
Or I'll think about what I hear. Maybe there's faint music in the background or you can hear your air conditioner or the fan above you. I don't care what you hear, but your senses bring you back to the presence. When you're in the presence and you're bringing all of your thoughts, your overwhelm is when you're too much in your head. You're thinking of all the big things.
00:19:54
When you come into your presence, it brings you back into your body and back into the present. And when your plate is overly full and you take just a minute or two to do this, it brings you back into the present and out of your head because you are using your senses. Smell, see, feel and hear. Part of stress and anxiety is getting caught up in the unknown, in the future, in the things we can't control. But your senses are real, they're tangible.
00:20:25
So pay attention to them and see what you feel and notice instantly that you will start to calm. It really helps to activate the parasympathetic system and helps you calm down and pull you out of your head and into your body, which is going to get you out of fight or flight. It is so simple and it works so well. I am telling you, just a couple of minutes, go through all your senses and pay attention and it really helps you calm down. Then you can step back and look at maybe something you need to work on in a more logical way because you're out of your head.
00:21:00
My next tip is breathing. If you follow me on social media, you know, I believe breathing is huge. It is important for your core. It is important for you to feel strong. We've had people explain that breathing helps with digestion and so many other things.
00:21:15
But breathing also helps you calm down. It helps that parasympathetic nervous system. So I want you to take a slow, deep breath. I want you to inhale through your nose, filling your core with air that is your ribs expanding, your back expanding, your belly expanding. Even if your chest fills all of it, just fill it with air, a nice deep inhale and a nice exhale.
00:21:39
Even Navy Seals, they train them to use breathing techniques to help them calm down and be less stressful in situations. And I'm thinking sometimes I think we're like, oh yeah, breathing, whatever. But if you take a step back and think like, okay, if a Navy Seal who is in the most stressful situations ever is using breathing techniques sometimes to destress, I probably should be doing that as well. So use your breathing. When you take nice deep inhales and exhales, it increases the supply of oxygen to your brain, which stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which again, remember, creates that calmness.
00:22:15
So use your diaphragm, take deep breaths. Another thing you can do with the breathing is practice the four, seven, eight breathing. I've talked about it in past episodes. It's really simple to remember. It's a breathing technique which just helps calm your body down.
00:22:31
Basically, you inhale deeply for 4 seconds, you hold the breath for 7 seconds and then you exhale fully for 8 seconds. This has really been shown, they've done tons of studies and it helps people manage stress and anxiety. So remember inhale four, hold seven exhale eight. When I was a little bit younger, I remember even in college I would call my dad stressed over things. And I'd be like, I have to do this and this and this and this and this.
00:22:57
And I would love to name off a list of 50 things I had to do that I was overwhelmed. And I remember my dad saying to me, oh honey, all you have to do is breathe. You'll stay alive if you just breathe. So just calm down and take a deep breath. And I think about that advice now and how actually more profound it is than I thought.
00:23:19
So if you have a lot on your plate, you have errands to run, a job, whatever dishes, all the things. If you're starting to feel that, feel those senses, take a deep breath and just take it down a notch with that breathing. Now, with those two things that I've already suggested, my third really kind of helps piggyback on those. Once you've done that, I want you to reflect and take a step back. This helps keep things in perspective.
00:23:44
So often I will ask myself, what is the worst thing that can really happen if I don't do insert whatever task you have that's making you feel overwhelmed. Sometimes that answer might not be that great, but really, what is the worst thing that could happen or would it just be okay if maybe that thing didn't happen? So once I have calmed with breathing or senses, I often will reflect and look at the big picture. The second thing I do in this, which is my fourth tip, is I think of the things I'm grateful for, all of the things you have been blessed with. So studies have shown that gratitude actually helps us again move out of that sympathetic, the fight or flight zone into calmness.
00:24:26
So often I will feel emotion. I'm feeling? Maybe I'm overwhelmed. I'll feel that emotion, I'll feel the situation, what's going on. And then I'll think of the situation and think of what I am thankful for in that situation.
00:24:39
Maybe I have too many errands to run and I'm trying to pick up my kids and I might think, oh my gosh, I'm just always so late, I'm this and that. And I might think I'm so lucky that I live close to the school, that I can pick up my kids and that I get to talk to them for a few minutes after school instead of focusing on how hard that is, that I have to do that every day, and how it sometimes makes it difficult for work or sometimes with work. I'll think I have too many tasks on my plate, I just can't manage it. And then I think I'll take a step back, reflect and think, I'm so thankful that I have a job, that I get to work with women all day every day and we get to build a great community together. So taking that step of gratitude makes a huge difference and it helps calm us and see the good.
00:25:25
Even in a stressful, anxious situation, we see the good when we use gratitude. So that's my fourth tip. My fifth tip is look at the expectation and you got to let go of perfectionism. So often we can cause stress and anxiety because we have expectations, we have things we want to turn out a certain way. And sometimes our greatest worries and stress come from the fact that life doesn't always turn out the way that we thought it should have or looking around and the way that we have seen other people's lives turn out.
00:25:57
So I want you to think about your expectations. Are you following people online that make you feel stressed, that make you feel less than? If so unfollow them. Even if that means me. I'd rather you unfollow me, if you follow me on Instagram than ever.
00:26:12
Feel bad about yourself because I'm not helping you. If you feel bad about yourself, that's not helpful. You're going to be better off not following those accounts. You don't need them, so let them go. Maybe you have a friend or a neighbor or someone who makes you feel less than distance yourself.
00:26:29
You don't have to be mean. You don't have to do anything else but distance. Yourself. You don't need them. If they're bringing stress or making you feel less than, you don't need them.
00:26:37
For me, one of the ways that I lowered my own expectations is I mentioned that I used to like to do really lengthy to do lists, and I would look at this massive to do list and then I'd only do like two or three things on it, and then I'd feel bad. I was like, oh, I want to update this, I want to add this, I want to film this, I want to go on a walk with my kids, and I want to make this. And it was just too many layers. And I learned for me that I had to lower my expectation in some ways and say, you know what? I'm going to do three things a day, three big things.
00:27:06
That's it. And if I get those three things done, if I get other things done on my to do list, great. And if I don't? Great. So I only focus on three things a day.
00:27:17
And I learned from me that that made me feel powerful because I'd finished those three things and anything else I got on the list done, fantastic. When before I had a list of ten, and if I got seven done, I felt like I had failed because I didn't finish the list. So that's one way that I lowered my own expectations. When you have a lengthy to do list, I only have three things each day. If you have a brain dump.
00:27:41
So one thing you can do, and I know Jordan Page teaches this, is do a brain dump just on one day. All the things you have to do, add them all up, get them out of your brain so they're not making you feel overwhelmed and stressed. And then I would suggest just taking three a day and adding them to each day. That's it. If you end up doing extras on top of that, fantastic.
00:28:02
If you don't, fantastic. Either way, it's going to help lower the expectation and make you feel empowered, and you won't have to be worried about being perfect and getting it all done. My next tip is to get outside. I know that you probably know that fresh air and sun is actually really great for you. And it is so simple to go outside, take a big inhale in, go on a walk, go on a bike ride, sit in the grass, whatever it is, and I use this tool all the time.
00:28:33
I go on a walk by myself almost every day. And when I had a baby, I did the stroller thing with the baby, so I wasn't by myself. But I would go almost every day because it just helped bring all of the things in my head and let me think through them and work through them. And then I could come home and work with my kids better. I felt like I had to change a scenery or I could work on an assignment better.
00:28:54
Whatever it was, it made a huge difference. In the episode where I talk about having depression as a college student, I tell the story about my dad where I was not leaving my apartment. I was laying in my bed for long periods of time, staring at the fan. And I called my dad and told him about it. And my dad was like, go outside and get some fresh air.
00:29:14
I need you to go on a walk. I need you to use gratitude and look at all the plants around you and think how amazing they are and your senses and take note of what they look like, take note of what you smell, take note of what you hear. And I started walking that way and my walks turned into runs and my runs turned into fitness classes. And that's actually how I got into fitness. It's kind of crazy when you think about it because I have then now been in fitness for almost 20 years.
00:29:42
But that is how I did it. When I was 18, I was depressed and I got outside and it changed everything for me personally. Now there's different levels of that, obviously, and you can need more help than that. But going outside can help, it can ground you and bring you back to yourself and help you feel good. Because spending time in nature can reduce stress and improve your sense of well being.
00:30:08
Along with getting outside is exercising. You know, I'm going to say exercise. That is such a huge one. Exercise releases our endorphins. It makes a huge difference and endorphins help calm our cortisol.
00:30:21
So if your cortisol is really high, you need those endorphins. Something else to think about, which we talked about just a little bit ago on the episode where we talked about hormones, is if you do have really high stress, if you are living in the red day in and day out, you might want to look at exercises that are a little more restorative, like yoga or Pilates walking or weights where they're not really spiking. Your heart rate really crazy, so it's not really affecting your cortisol but are really restorative. And that might help you in that moment as well. In fact, the best thing you can do is since especially we're hitting summer combine exercise and getting outside, it's going to make it even better.
00:31:00
You're going to get two tasks done or two coping skills done with 1 st. It's going to be amazing for you. So think about in the next couple of months, adding those together. And I know what is hard is when you live somewhere where it's cold in the winter, that can be tricky to get outside, but I would still encourage you to do it. Get your park on, get your snow hat on and stand outside even for 2 minutes and take big inhales, in and feel that cold air come in, feel it go out and then go back in your house.
00:31:28
I think it makes a huge difference and not only do I think it does, I know it does from my own experience and research shows that both of those again help ignite your calming system, your parasympathetic system. My last tip I'm going to give you so the 8th tip I'm going to give you is progressive relaxation. And I saved this for last because I'll be honest, I really struggle with meditating. I know it works really well for some people, but it doesn't work very well for me. Not because it doesn't work, but because my brain's got like lots of dancing monkeys in it and it's really busy.
00:32:06
I'm really creative in the way that I work and it's hard for me to meditate and just clear it. So I have really loved this progressive relaxation because it actually is about focusing in on something and then shifting and I can focus on stuff and then shift. So it makes a difference because I don't have to clear my mind as much. This is something that like to do at night before I go to bed. I've been very open about the fact that sometimes it's hard for me to go to sleep because I get really creative as we go later at night.
00:32:39
In fact, my husband teases me, we'll go to lay down in bed and I'm sure a lot of you are like this. And all of a sudden I want to have a deep conversation about who we're going to put in this class with this grade and what our finances are and also why we need to go to this person and all the things and he's like, can we just go to bed? So I think that that is important and this is one way that I have slowed my own stress when I'm going to sleep, made it easier for me to fall asleep. And you can use this during any part of the day and just do it shorter and it really helps relax you. I'm actually going to read a small expert from the class so that I make sure that you understand exactly how to do this because I think is so clear and it's been very useful for me.
00:33:22
So how you want to do it is you want to if you're doing it before you go to bed, obviously you're going to be laying in your bed, but you could just do it sitting at a chair or sitting in your car at a stoplight and just do a shorter version of it. But what you're going to do is you're going to scan your body for any tension that you're carrying. I want you to concentrate on just one body part at a time. So consciously relax each of your body parts and then feel the tension draining away. Let's say, for example, we're starting with our toes, we're going to say, is there tension in our toes?
00:33:52
If there's tension in our toes, how can we relax them and feel it draining away? Kind of like sand going through your fingers. Take your time doing this, then maybe move to your calfs or your quads or maybe you're starting with your neck. Whatever it is, feel for that tension. Wherever it is.
00:34:09
You might be like, oh my gosh, my back is so tense. Think about really relaxing it and that sand falling through your hands. If you're having a hard time feeling that tension relax away. You're going to tense that body part for 10 seconds. So let's say it's your back.
00:34:27
Your back is really tense and you are having a hard time relaxing it. I want you to actually tense it. Like you're flexing it for 10 seconds, count to ten and then I want you to release for 10 seconds and feel it all melt away. I want you to go through each of your body parts doing this. Your head, your face, your eyes, jaw, neck, shoulders, back, arms, hands, fingers, literally anything.
00:34:54
Chest, ABS, legs, feet and toes. Mentally scan the body, feel the tension, try to release it. If you can't release it, tense it for 10 seconds, then let it completely relax. When you're done with this, typically by then, to be honest, I've been falling asleep lately. But if not, I try to focus on a memory or something that really brings me peace, a thought, a memory, an experience, a setting that really brings me peace and joy.
00:35:23
As I mentioned, you can do this within a couple of minutes or you can take much longer. But I have loved it because it actually helps me focus in on my body parts and fully relax them. And then I fall asleep so fast after this. Lately, since I've been doing this and I really like it. So if you have tension before you go to bed, if you have tension throughout the day, try this progressive relaxation where you're thinking about the body part, trying to relax it, tensing it if you can, imagining it just melt away and then move to your next body part.
00:35:55
I hope so much that you learned and got some ideas from these eight tips. I hope you walk away with one or two new coping skills that you haven't done before. And even for some of them, if you've scoffed at them before, I want you to try them again. We may think, oh, it's not a big deal to just go outside. It does make a difference.
00:36:15
You may think, oh my five senses don't make that much of a difference. When I'm really overwhelmed, it actually makes you present. Really, really present. And when you're present, you can't be overwhelmed. It's easier for you to be in the moment and change your focus to shift your focus.
00:36:30
So please write down 1234 or all of them and keep them on your phone. So next time you're stressed, you can pull open your phone and you can look at the list quickly, and you can do it or save the post that I'm adding on the make it simple podcast page. And save it so that when it happens again, you can pull up that post and see the zones and be aware of the zones and even be aware of some of the coping mechanisms. It will make a huge difference. I can say for myself using these very simple things that I can do within minutes, seconds, pretty quickly have made a huge difference in me control trolling my own stress, it's made a difference.
00:37:07
My husband's been working on it. It really does work, but we have to be willing to try to use the coping skills. So please take some home, tuck them in your back pocket, use them. You are doing so much better than you think you are. And we'll chat next week.