THIS is Why Stress Overwhelms You
9 May 2024 · 9 min
Brendon Burchard traces stress and overwhelm to the "what-if" loop, a repetitive thought pattern that spikes cortisol and disrupts digestion. Poor sleep, excess caffeine, and lack of movement worsen it. He recommends removing time pressure and building habits like sleep and exercise to stabilize your energy, then taking concrete action on worries instead of ruminating.
Chapters
I want to talk to you about the not so merry go round in life. If you remove time from the equation, most stress and overwhelm goes away. Thoughts that are negative, over and over, on repeat spin up your whole body. Your system is freaking out at you. You're calling it stress. I'm calling it stupid habits. Stress has a thought pattern. That thought pattern saying, what if negative? And it doesn't stop. You gotta get off the merry go round. You gotta get off it or you'll spin yourself into sickness. Now let's talk about why you get so much stress, why you get so much difficulty. I want to talk to you about the not so merry go round in life. You want to know what stress looks like? Let me tell you what stress looks like. Here you are, this happy person sitting over here, and all the thunder and the lightning, it's coming at you. And all of a sudden you go like this. And you're freaked out. But see, this is always going on. Why did it freak you out today? Why did it freak you out in this moment? What's the difference? It's always there. The noise is always there. Any one of us in this room could choose 50 things to get stressed and freaked out about it. Why does the surprise come now? I'm not a cognitive behavioral therapist in any way, but I think they reveal a lot of good things. And here's what's happening. Everything's hitting you. It's always hitting you. But usually two things are happening. Number one, you're just in a bad, energetic state. You didn't sleep, you didn't eat. You're burned out. You're tired. You haven't worked out. You had 17 Diet Cokes. You're stressed. I don't know why I'm so freaked out. You just had 400 milligrams of caffeine. I don't know why. You just had 34 grams of sugar. I'm so amazed people are shocked that their system is going. You son of a. Your system is freaking out at you. You're calling it stress. I'm calling it stupid habits. I'm sorry. You're so shocked that you freaked out at your wife after you had seven Red Bulls. Where is our intelligence about our own energy, our own physiology? If you're not sleeping, don't be so shocked that you screamed at your daughter. And stop blaming her. Look at your way of setting up your fortress. Have you been getting strong for her or are you just freaking out at her? It's not my job to be overreactive. To my wife, it's my job to teach myself to be in a good place so I'm less likely to become overreactive. Y' all follow? Well, the second thing I'm gonna explain in the most easy and elegant way, and I hope you've teached this before, or it really hits today. So you're just in a bad energetic state. Your mood is off, your energy's off, you're overwhelmed, like physically with bad stuff in your body. Or what tends to happen is this. You say what if? And you fill it in with a negative. Negatives. Let me plural that. So let me give you an example. When you feel deep gratitude in your life, you're saying thank you for a list of things. And you're allowing those things to flood yourself when you're feeling negative in life. Here's what we tend to do when we feel that stress and over what if this project ends? What if they reject me? What if this deal fails? What if I launch it and no one buys it? What if my neighbors make fun of me? What if. And you start on this merry go round in your mind. And you start spinning up your mind. What if negative? What if negative? What if Negative. What if? And all of a sudden you're overwhelmed. What if I can't handle it? What if I'm not good enough? What if they make fun of me? What if I'm ruined? What if they reject? What if I can't handle it? What if I can't handle it? What if this never gets done? What if it doesn't get done on time? Oh my God. What if all these things happen and they don't get done on time? Do you know a magic formula in life? If you remove time from the equation, most stress and overwhelm goes away. You get caught in an urgency loop. All now, all now, all now, bad now, all now, bad now, all now. And it spins your brain and it's just like not a. It's not a merry go round. It's an un. Merry go round. It's a negative merry go round. Sorry. It spins. It spins. And you know what happens when it spins up here? It starts spinning down here and you make yourself sick. You're worry, worry, worry. What if negative, bad, all now. That's called worry in the polite society. You're spinning yourself into anxiety with your thoughts. Worry. What if negative? What if negative? What if. What if negative? What if negative? All bad now. All bad now. All bad now. Churns up this thing called stomach acid. Do you know there's A direct correlation. You all know about the gut brain axis, but what most people understand is it works the other way. We're all so focused on probiotics, but you want to make your gut feel real bad. What if negative? What if negative? What if negative? What if negative? What if negative? What if you're spinning your brain and it's kicking out so much cortisol, so much reactive molecule that in your stomach you start to feel sick? You start to feel sick. I mean, you're just like, ah, ah. And now you're debilitated. Now, some people, the problem is your what if negative is causing the sick energetic state. Thoughts that are negative, over and over, on repeat spin up your whole body. We are so bad at society teaching that hormonal truth of being the animals that we are, that these thoughts are spinning up stomach acid and it feels bad. That's why. So I'm so sick to my stomach. Where is it coming from? Well, it's probably either coming from food or worry. So let's see. This last 72 hours, what have you been thinking about? What have you been feeling? What have you been eating? How you been taking care of yourself? Ultra members know I always teach us, you know, our energetic state. Any given moment, it's often a result of the last 72 hours, what we eat, how we slept, how we took care of ourself. Did we stretch? Did we open ourselves or not? All I want you to know, if you got nothing from today is these two simple ideas, these last two slides. You're setting up a foundation, the fortress, by building a positive life with positive habits that will help you weather the storm. Then when the lightning strikes, you're going, oh, you know what I'm probably doing? I've probably missed some signs. And one of those signs is I've been worried about something and not resolving it, not moving forward in it. I keep thinking about it and thinking about it. What if negative catastrophe, catastrophe, catastrophe. Without going, okay, brain, I, I get it. I heard your cue, that you're worried. You've communicated, you're worried. Now shut up. This is what I'm gonna do next. And you take the next right action of integrity worry followed by the next right action of integrity worry. Hey, everyone can worry. I'm okay if you worry. I'm okay if you stress. I have no problems. I just wanna equip you to go. That stress had some thunder, you might have missed it. What was the thunder? That stress had an energetic state. What'd you eat? How'd you sleep? How'd you move that stress has a thought pattern. That thought pattern saying, what if Negative? And it doesn't stop. You gotta get off the merry go round. You gotta get off it or you'll spin yourself into sickness. Is this helpful for anybody who's happy they came to growth ala so far, Sam?