Dealing With Stress

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App Podcast where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications Healthy Mindset Course Meditation and Goal Setting Technique for the Athlete and Workplace Athlete we're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome to the hartman.academy guided meditations. Before starting this meditation, please make sure you have consulted your doctor and are able to perform the exercise. Welcome to this guided meditation. I'm Lisa and I'm going to take you through this to help you overcome stress when we are presented with situations in our life that are very high stress, it seems impossible to get past the stressful feelings to see clearly. The best way to tackle high stress situations is through full and conscious breathing. When we are not present in our bodies, our thoughts can carry us away, making stressful situations almost debilitating. Luckily, when we have awareness to focus on our breath and body, we can bring ourselves back into the present moment, bringing us clarity. So let's honor our breath now and how it brings us into the present moment by taking five significant and purposeful breaths. One. Fully inhale, expanding your belly and your chest as much as you can. Hold for a moment. And exhale, feeling a wave of relaxation sweep over you. Inhale, filling your entire breathing system with fresh oxygen. Hold and exhale, the wave of relaxation gently sweeping over you. Inhale, hold and exhale. Just notice how you are feeling. Beautiful breath coming in, holding it, feeling invigorated from oxygen and allowing relaxation to sweep over you. Take note of how you feel at this very moment. You now have an abundance of oxygen. This is how we are created to feel. Breathing deeply and fully is an expression of self compassion. Let the flow of your breath become natural and notice how abundance feels. Feels. Now visualize yourself standing in a big wide field and no one else is around. Everything is calm and peaceful. You are surrounded by nature. Sit down in this meadow and look around, noticing the beauty all around you. You are fully relaxed. In the distance you see dark clouds closing in. As the sky grows a little darker. You see that a small storm is forming and you feel some raindrops falling down. You feel them drip on your skin. Imagine that this storm is your stress. It could be a mild stress with just some rain and a little wind or it could be a very High stress with extremely strong winds and a very heavy rain pouring down. In this visual, we are going to face a very strong and powerful storm to make ourselves stronger. So as you feel the storm getting even stronger and the wind is blowing harder and harder, you sit there in the meadow, completely unfazed by it. The storm cannot hurt you. Here. You have a choice to react to this storm with fear or with faith, with love and compassion, Knowing that the storm is harmless in this visualization you are creating. Stress is our reaction to fear, worry and even high demands. Whether the fear is real or not, we have to learn the proper reaction to all these things. Sometimes you can't help it and stress will take over in a matter of seconds and we must handle it properly or it will handle us. Just like sitting through the storm in a field. Stress cannot harm you if you know that, it simply passes you by. What matters is your own reaction to the events around you. Really embrace the stress now and fully let exist without fighting it. You see the storm of stress in front of you is very dark. As the storm clouds get thicker, raining down with fury, You decide to get up from where you were sitting and slowly start walking towards it without fear nor worry, just pure confidence that you are safe and in control. You get closer and closer as the storm draws near and the wind blows with tremendous speed. The winds and rains have no effect on you. It is really easy for you to step forward and only your clothes are flopping around. As you look forward, you see the eye of this storm and around that eye, the winds and the rain are extremely powerful and strong. Yet you have zero worry as you step inside of this eye. You are standing now inside the center and everything is calm and peaceful here. You look around from within the eye of the storm and can see all the chaos around you. But inside here it is calm and cozy. This is your space. This is your safe spot. And so when the stress has fully taken over you, you have a choice to let it blow over without a fight. Just sitting right in the middle of it, realizing that it cannot hurt you. Here. Witness your body as a center and any stress is just a storm surrounding you that comes and goes. You are in control and can always come back to your safe space. And now storm is losing its power. It's dying down slowly. The rain is easing up and it's only now drizzling. You see the clouds drifting away as the sky gets brighter. The sunlight peeks through the clouds as they pass by, then eventually bursts out with great intensity, shining a beautiful light all around you. You see birds coming out and start singing. You see butterflies and bees buzzing around the flowers that are blossoming now after the heavy rains. Everything is beautiful now. Everything is as it should. This moment represents you being in a beautiful state of mind where a stress had no control of you as it passed you by. And now we're going to take three nice deep breaths in, slowly bringing ourselves back to the present moment. One Nice full breath of fresh energy. Two Breathing, taking in all that you learned here today. And three Taking in another helpful breath. Allowing the memory of the storm passing through. Allowing the memory of your strength through the storm to be present in your mind right now. Use this session or technique whenever you find yourself in a high stress situation and you will be amazed at how you can ride out the storm of stress. Enjoy your day.

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please Visit our website healthymindsetapp.com thanks again for listening and we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.