PPI #14: It's Not Stress It's You

Imagine three groups of people. The first group experiences virtually no stress, a stress free life. The second group experiences stress but views it positively. The third group experiences stress but views it negatively. Which group do you think lives the longest? It's the second group. The group experiencing stress but viewing it positively actually outlives the group that experiences virtually no stress or pretty much lives a stress free life. Now you may have thought up to this point that stress is something that you should be avoiding. But actually it's not stress, it's you. It's your view of stress that is potentially making life a lot harder for you and could potentially kill you. So actually what we need to be doing is thinking differently about how we handle stress, how we process it. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. My name is Eric Partaker and today I want to tell you a bit about my struggle with stress, my journey through it all, and some tips and tricks that you can use to better handle stress in your life and actually benefit from it and actually become stronger as a result of it. So for me personally, stress was absolutely something that I constantly was seeking to avoid. How do I meditate my way out of experiencing any stress whatsoever? How do I avoid stressful situations? How do I have less stress in my life? And I was actually starting to stress myself out by trying to pursue this stress free life when suddenly I discovered that there's a whole other approach out there, There's a whole other way of dealing with stress. And there's a lot of evidence and research that's showing that, as I said to start off this video, that it's actually our view on stress, which is the key thing, and that stress is actually something that makes us stronger. Now you might be thinking, well, stress doesn't really make us stronger, but you'd be wrong there because there's lots of areas, for example, within our body where stress actually improves us. UV radiation in small doses actually repairs tissues in our body. Exposure to germs and bacteria builds our immune system. And when we stress a muscle, it causes it to grow. So in actuality.

Our response to stress, which is naturally happening within our body, you know, this positive view on stress, we just need to get it up here in our heads. And the first way we do that is by reframing stress. So every moment of adversity, every challenge, everything that doesn't go your way, rather than these being things that upset you, we could start to view these things as repetitions in the gym of life. Each and every one of these Things represents a chance for ourselves to complete that repetition, if you will, complete that challenge, so that we can turn challenge into growth and become stronger as a result. So in a way, we can turn life into one big mental gym. It becomes our training camp. Whereas we go to gym, say physically, we go to the gym to work out for 30 minutes or an hour a day. The entire day can be our training camp, the entire day can be our gym. And every single thing that doesn't go our way is a chance for us to respond in a more optimal, in a better way to whatever that was. And by doing that continually, by first reframing how we approach things, we can get better and better at responding to the very things that trigger us or that cause stress in our life. Now, the second thing that we can do with. So first thing just to recap is reframe stress. Stress is not something bad for you. Stress is actually something, if you view it positively, that can strengthen you. Your body already naturally does this. So it's about just getting it up here in your head. Now here's a simple tool that will help you once you're at that, okay, I'm ready to reframe stress. How do I actually do that? So, and this tool is all about creating space, creating space between stimulus and response so that you can choose the optimal response. And how do we go about doing this? Well, first, first I'd like you to think about what are the things that trigger you, what are the things that really get you upset and, you know, drive you up the wall? It could be, you know, a pet peeve behavior in a friend or a family member or a colleague. It could be when somebody cuts you off in traffic. It could be when you don't hit your goals. You know, maybe your company or your team isn't performing as much as you would like. And that's stressing you. Think about the things that trigger you and write that list down and visualize when those triggers happen. Picture like a film in your head. How do you typically respond? How do you respond to each and every one of those moments? And what you'll probably notice is that that response, whatever it may be, is typically a suboptimal response. So what I mean is it, it's not the same response that the very best version of you would give, or like the 95 year old, you know, wisest version of you. It's something less than that. And very often that response is often an emotional response as well. So again, that emotional responses, they come from the more ancient part of our brain. And so what we want to get really good at is creating space between stimulus, whatever that thing is that's triggering you, causing you stress, and how we respond. Because we can respond in a stressed out way, or we can respond with a bit more control, you know, a bit more strength, a bit more resilience. I mean, wouldn't you like to be responding to things in life, Things that are stressing you out in a more calm, focused and resilient way? I mean, wouldn't you want the strength to do that? And so this technique here is a way to practice that and strengthen that muscle. And we create space by simply pausing. So whatever is triggering us, don't respond right away. Pause. A pause could be a deep breath, it could be walking out of the room, it could be going for a walk. But literally create space, a tiny moment of awareness between whatever that stimulus is and your response so that you can choose an optimal response. Remember I was saying how the typical response pattern is an emotional, emotional response coming from the more ancient part of your brain? Well, when you pause and create space, you give yourself an opportunity to turn on this part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, so that you can literally choose, well, how should I respond? And you can choose.

The response that you think would be most consistent with the best version of you. How would the best version of you respond in that situation? The most courageous version of you, how would that 95 year old version of you respond? And that same visualization exercise that I was actually saying, where you picture the things that trigger you and. And you picture the things, sorry, you picture the way that you typically respond.

Once you summon that best version of you, you can also visualize, well, how would that best version of me respond to each of those situations? And if all you do when those situations in the future pop up is just focus on creating space, a pause between the stimulus and response, you're more likely to call up that best version of you response to whatever that stressful trigger is in your life. So we have reframing stress as our first thing. Okay. We have creating some space between stimulus and response so that we can get better at choosing an optimal response. As a second thing, the third and final thing that you can be doing to better handle stress is hire a coach. Now, coaching is something that has been used in sports and in the upper realms of business for years. We see coaches in music and entertainment, in the military. There's always going to be things that you don't see. There's always going to be things that when they hit you, will stress you out, and you'll feel completely unprepared for them, no matter how much you might try to prepare, advance. And by having that coach there, by having someone to both support you and challenge you, you're more likely to better process and handle those stressful events as and when they occur in the future. And great tips for choosing a coach. Choose somebody that you like. Choose somebody that has been perhaps in the trenches themselves, doing the types of things that you're doing, and choose someone that you think you can have a great relationship with. And the way one of the simpler ways to establish that is by just try some different coaches out, find one that fits for you. But having that support in the form of a coach will also help you better process and handle stress. So we're reframing stress. We're creating space when the things that stress us out happen so that we can choose the optimal response. And we're thinking about how can we bring a coach into the fold to help us better handle the unexpected. Now, I just want to leave you with a quick story. So we'll call this person Tony. He's one of my coaching clients, CEO of several different companies, actually. And everything was great in Tony's life, except he said the relationship with his youngest son. And I asked him to go into detail on that and describe what's. What's going. Going wrong in the relationship. And Tony proceeded to tell me, were there certain things that his son did that just drive him up the wall? And it always brought out the worst in him. And there were things like, you know, not just not listening to what he asked him to do, having difficulty getting him to settle down at night for bed, or having difficulty getting him to sit down and do his reading. And I asked Tony to, well, in those moments, picture each of them happening. Picture now how you currently respond. And now I want you to picture how would the best version of you respond, the wisest, strongest version of you? And of course, those response patterns were different from how he was typically responding. And then I focused Tony on just creating space. I said, when those trigger events happen in the future, just create space. A tiny bit of awareness between the stimulus and the response so that you can choose your optimal response. And over time, Tony started to respond to his son in the way that he had envisioned the best version of him would respond, but just by focusing on creating space after the things that were triggering him. And over time, Tony said his relationship with his son dramatically improved and is now one of the strongest relationships that he has in his life today. So I hope you get a lot better at processing stress by realizing that it's not stress, it's your approach to it. We can reframe it. We can create space, and we can also bring in other people to help us in the form of a coach or a mentor. And if you'd like insights like this and like to learn even more, please head over to my website@ericpartaker.com where you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter.