6 Tips to Reduce Stress

Hey! All right, how to reduce stress. What is stress? Stress is basically— I looked up a few definitions. Stress, stress is basically you responding to some kind of external, uh, external input. Okay, it is— it could be a demand or a threat, but it's anything that causes your energy level to rise to meet a demand. Okay, you can have stress because of something good. You know, you're about to walk across the stage at graduation and you're stressed out about people seeing you and walking, being in front of all the people, but it's a good thing. You know, the graduation is a good thing. You can still be stressed about that, but it's a body— it's a reaction in your body. It can be mental emotional, physical. And as many of you already know, we are physiologically connected to our emotional and mental well-being, spiritual well-being. So when you experience stress, it could come in from a variety of different angles, but the bottom line is your body reacts to it. Your body reacts to it. Everybody's heard about cortisol. I must have plenty of that, you know, belly fat. Uh, it's a reality that your body is always trying to survive. And so when you have stress, things that require energy, your body goes into survival mode. And in short spurts, that is okay. In long spurts, it can wreak a huge amount of damage on your physiological, psychological, emotional, mental well-being. So it's something to deal with. And the sad part is that most of us are so used to being stressed, we don't even know it. We don't even know that we're living stressed. In fact, one of the things that COVID-19 may have taught many of us, or that we're still learning, is that when you change the rhythm at which you live your life, uh, to some degree for many of us, we've reduced the stress. And so many of us didn't even realize how stressed out we were on that car ride every day to work because we do it all the time. We didn't realize how stressed out we were taking our kids to everything under the sun because— hey, Faithy, I see you— uh, because we're so used to living at that speed. And I'm a high-speed liver, so I'm talking from experience here. I'm a high-capacity person, but I usually don't recognize when my capacity has come to an end. I just keep going because I'm so used to it, you know. And even a Ferrari, if you constantly drive it at 100 miles an hour, it'll burn out faster than a car— than driving it at normal speeds. I don't care what your capacity is, low capacity, high capacity, you have to know your speed limit, not your speed capacity, because we are not designed to live at our full capacity non-stop. That was for free. All right, so here are— do I have 5? I was supposed to have 5. But maybe I have 6, and I'm going to run through these because my team is not going to wait on me today. Number 1, and I had to do this this morning because I woke up. One of my signals for stress is that I feel like I have a stone on my chest. That's the only way I can think of to describe it. I just feel like a weight. It is a, not just an emotional, it is a physical weight. I just feel heavy. Anybody ever feel heavy? Do you understand what I'm saying? You just, you just feel heavy. Okay. So that's my signal that there's something I got to get rid of. So the first thing I do is identify the source of stress over there. Uh, next to, uh, on this little coffee stand, I have a little journal because that's going through the 21-day journey. I've encouraged the ladies to journal, so you can get that for free too. Get a journal, but a journal doesn't have to be beautiful. You don't have to go to Target, get a notepad, you know, anything that's connected. So not a random sheet of paper, you know, it could just be a tablet, a spiral. Don't, don't stress out about it and don't spend 3 hours in Target trying to figure out which one. Doesn't matter. Composition book. But get it out, okay? And just list the things. Get it out of your head. You don't have to write. This doesn't have to be prose. This does not have to be, um, you don't have to be a writer. You don't have to write a whole page of what you did yesterday. It's just lists. Just get them out. And they don't have to even be in list form. They can just be all over the page, okay? Get your thoughts out of your head, um, and then identify which of those things are temporary, ongoing, or situational. 'Cause if it's temporary, you know, if you're about to move, that's stressful, right? But it's temporary, okay? And it is time-bound. But if you look at it and say, I'm stressed because every single day I have to fight traffic taking my kids to and from school, then you can say, okay, this is ongoing. Do I actually want this to be ongoing or not? I feel like this whole— I feel like I could break up this whole talk already into like 5 segments, but I'm gonna drive through it, okay? I'm gonna drive through it. Somebody say drive through it, Chrystal Hurst. Stay committed, be on time with your team. Okay, so, um, if it's ongoing, then you can say, is this something ongoing that I want to maintain? So separate the right now, the temporary, from long term, and then you can decide how you can deal with the temporary and how you can adjust the long term. Okay, ask yourself the question, what can I do about it? Because honestly, our stress levels rise when we don't acknowledge our power. You can say no. You can change the deadline. You can say, I can't handle that. You can say, I'm so sorry, you'll have to choose somebody else. You have more power than you realize to adjust your stress level. So identify what's stressing you out. Say, is this temporary and I can deal with it in the short run, or long-term? Long-term things for sure. Can I adjust this? Because do I want to live with this forever? Do my kids need to go to school in the neighborhood instead of me driving them out to this private school 25 minutes away? Or do we need an alternative? Is there a carpool situation? Is my kid old enough to drive? Can Can they ride the bus? Yes. I have put my kids on the bus before. My oldest daughter had to take a class in Richardson. She was 16. I took her to the bus. She, the bus, she caught the train, the train, she caught a bus and went to class. I don't know if I'd do that with my boys because boys are different than girls. I'd be afraid they wouldn't make it. Did you not see that it was just stopped? But anyway, I digress. Number 2, be positive. Stress focuses on all the things that could go wrong, all the things that you don't like. All the things that you feel like you can't do, you start feeling overwhelmed. Focus on the positive. Find one thing— a lot of people say three— one thing every day to be grateful for. This is where prayer comes in. God, I thank you for— God, I recognize you— I praise you for— it could be worse, at least I'm not— shift your focus, because stress also means you're probably focusing on what's not going right. So focus on what is going right. It'll immediately lift your mood. Okay, focus on— so identify the source. Be positive. Release what you can't control, because there's a lot of stuff, y'all, we're stressed out about we cannot control. We just can't. Write it down and walk away. That's how I do when I pray for people. Can't control you, but I should go sure pray for you. So I write your name down in my little book, then I put it down. Your name is in the book. I can't control you. I gotta walk away. Let yourself off the hook. If you write things down and there's a list of 27 things you're trying to do in the next 4 hours, you cannot do that. Ma'am, you cannot do that. So write it down, pick the 3 you're going to work on, and release the rest. You are human, and I promise you, everything you're trying to get done today, if you died today and if it's really important, somebody else would do it. So figure out what only you can do, what's most important for today, and then release the other things. Let yourself off your hook. Give yourself grace. I got a whole book coming out about that next year because y'all, we don't know how to do that. We don't know how to release ourselves. We don't know how to release other people and just let it go. Let it go. I haven't even seen the movie, but I've heard all the little girls sing it for a couple of years now. So that's how well that song goes. Recognize what can wait, release what you can't control. And in releasing it, it doesn't mean you're releasing it forever. Just say, what can wait? I can do this next week. Push it to next month. I wanted to do it this week, but I didn't know. COVID-19 was going to show up. So I'm going to just push it forward. Engage with your feelings. This goes back to journaling. How do you really feel about it? Be honest. Journal it. Talk to your friend. Can I just download to you real quick? Call your counselor. If you need to cry, cry. Okay. So identify the source of stress. Be positive. Release what you can't control. Engage with your feelings. Let off steam. And I mean physically let off steam. Go outside, go for a walk. If you are cooking something and it builds up steam— my mother used to cook with a pressure cooker. Okay. When we would take the top off, we would have to do all these things to protect ourselves. Because if you've been holding in that steam and then you take the top off, the steam will burn you. It's dangerous. So you need to learn how to let off steam. So take a walk, take a shower, scream in your pillow. Okay. Call a friend and cry. Go work out, sweat, and breathe deep. Breathe deep. Like literally let it out. You have to learn how how to release the pressure in your life. Me, listen, I will walk out of this door in a second and say to my mister, I gotta go. Go where? I don't know. I just go for a drive sometimes. Or he'll say, where you going? I'm going to get a massage. You have an appointment? Nope, I'm just gonna show up and hope somebody can take me. Because if somebody doesn't work this out of me, y'all are going to work this out of me, and it's not going to be pretty. Okay? I mean, you have to know how to say, I'm about to blow, and let— and you choose to let it out instead of reacting and somebody forcing it out, and then it's not good. Identify the source of stress. Be positive. Release what you can't control. Engage with your feelings. Let off steam. And then here it is, y'all, prioritize R&R. I was talking to a girl last week. We talked about motherhood every Thursday at 2 o'clock. I do mom talks on Instagram, COVID-19 related but mother specific. And she said she has ages 10 through 23 in her house. And I said, so, and 6 of them are girls. She has 7 kids. I said, what do you do? To get some R&R? She says, oh, I go into my room and close the door. You don't have to go to Hawaii. Go in your room and close the door and just say, you know what, I'm going to be still. I'm not going to leave this weekend. I'm not going to drive my car. The kids have to know they can't come in right now. I'm going to lock myself in the bathroom. I'm going to go for a drive with the windows down. You have to know how to physically or metaphorically close the door. Okay, literally breathe, y'all. We don't breathe deep enough. It's called shallow breathing or deep breathing. Sometimes you just need to take a deep breath. That's why that little app on your phone, uh, Breathe is an app, you know, Calm, Headspace, all these little meditation— they just make you slow down. Abide. Because we don't slow down and just breathe. You need to understand how to close the door, how to breathe, how to be still, how to stretch. We'll go work out in a minute, but we don't stretch. And you can do more damage to your body over time not stretching than you can actually building up your cardio. So it's a fact. Take a Sabbath. God rested. If God rested, we do too. And then y'all, take a nap. Some of y'all need a nap. Just, just take a nap. Wake up a little more refreshed. You need to understand Sabbath. Sabbath is a principle of operating in rest, okay? It's a principle of operating in rest. And that does mean you close the door. It does mean you take a nap. It does mean I'll call you back. It does mean you shut down your email. It does mean you put your phone on do not disturb.. But it also just means you take a day off. Like, we try to, you know, over-spiritualize or under-spiritualize it. Just because the stores are open on Sunday doesn't mean that's when you have to go. You need a day when you just don't go nowhere. You just say, I'm not coming, it's my Sabbath day. I'm not answering the phone, I'm not answering your text. I love you, it can wait. Texting and driving, it can wait. So can many other things in our lives too. So there you go, y'all. It was 6 things: identify the source of stress, be positive, Release what you can't control. Engage with your feelings. Let off steam. Prioritize R&R. Okay, and then y'all, here's the deal. If you don't manage your stress, if you don't reduce your stress, your stress will manage you. And you don't want to operate in your life out of stress. That means you won't be making good decisions, you won't be making sound decisions, you won't be giving your life your best self because you'll constantly be trying to preserve your energy. You'll constantly be in flight flight or fight, fight or flight, you will constantly be not able to give your best because you cannot give your best when you're trying to preserve. You, you cannot give the most when you're trying to hang on. Okay. I wanna know what you do to deal with your stress. If you wanna be a part of that conversation, sure. You can do that in the comments here. All right, y'all have a great day. I will see you later. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll talk about something else fun then too.