Practice These Techniques To Relieve Daily Stress

In today's video, I'm going to give you eight techniques to use to relieve your daily stress whenever you feel stressed or anxious throughout your day. Let's dive in. We all know that it seems like since 2020, things have gotten more and more and more and more stressful. And I don't know if you guys are same as me. It just seems to build up. And what I needed was tools in my tool belt. That when I feel like there's stress coming up, when I feel like there's anxiety coming up, because I have stress and anxiety and just like other people do. But what I want to have is I want to have tools in my tool belt so that when it happens, I can pull out a tool and say, hey, does this help with my stress and anxiety? Hey, does this help with my stress and anxiety? Because I don't want to let it overtake me or anything like that. I want to be the one that's in charge. And so let me go through the eight tips with you, the eight techniques with you. The first one, which you've been listening to this podcast for all you know, is breathing. The very first thing to shift. And your body, whether you're excited, whether you're sad, whether you're happy, whether you're emotional, whether you're terrified, the very first thing to shift is your breath. And then the very next thing is your heart rate. And so I know that if I feel a shift in my body that goes away, that I don't want it to go, I am going to go back to my breath. Then what I do, at least six deep breaths. And it's very simple. It's just in through the nose, out through the mouth, and when I breathe out through the mouth, it's breathing out like I'm breathing out through a straw. So it's a long exhale. I want my inhale to be around 4,5ish seconds, my exhale to be anywhere between 8 to 10 seconds. So it's sort of just. The longer you exhale, the more your heart rate actually slows down. When we breathe in deeply, we supply more oxygen to our brain into our body, which creates a sense of calm and alertness, but also counteracts the fight or flight mechanism that's inside of your brain. So when you're stressed or you're anxious, immediately your fight or flight kicks on. And now you're going, oh, my God, I'm anxious, I'm stressed. I don't know what to do. Okay, breathing is going to counteract the fight or Flight mechanism that's inside of your brain. So when you're, we're actually, physiologically speaking, deep breathing exercises activates the potty, the body's parasympathetic nervous system. And so if you've been listening for a while when I talk about how to actually calm your body down and how to change your nervous system, there is your sympathetic nervous system, which is the, the. It can be excited, it can be intense, it could be stress, fight or flight. That's the sympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic is calm, cool, collected. So physiologically speaking, deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system which helps counteract the stress induced sympathetic nervous system activity. Something that's really crazy now that I have a baby and I'm always, you know, calming them down. All that stuff is, and this is something that I learned from, read about it to actually help calm the baby's nervous system down is that if you take, if you're holding a baby that's, you know, stressed out, whatever it might be, crying, and you take three deep breaths, the baby's nervous system will start to calm down with your nervous system. And so three deep breaths can change not only your nervous system but also the baby that you're holding nervous system. But there was a study that was done in Japan years ago that found out that 60 breaths can massively change the state that somebody is in. It takes maybe a minute and a half. So whenever your state shifts to a place you don't want to be, just immediately go back to your breath. Okay? You can decrease your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure and relax a little bit more. The next thing that I always go to as well is gratitude. What you focus on grows. Focusing on what you don't want is going to, you're going to notice more things that you don't want, what you don't have. You're going to notice more things you don't have, what you used to have that you don't have anymore. You, you're going to start noticing that what you need to do is change your perspective. And you know, in the last episode and many episodes, I say set your GPS for how you want to feel. So I focus on gratitude first thing in the morning. It's sound, I get it. It sounds corny and cliche and boop boopy do. Okay, hippie, you want to focus on gratitude, but it actually works because you're setting your reticular activating system to pay attention to things that you're grateful for so that you find More things to be grateful for, which is going to have less feeling of lack of loss, of longing, of stress, of anxiety, all of that. So you change your perspective. Think about everything that you have. Think about everything that's around you. Think about everyone that you could be grateful for. You know, if you think about what you don't have, what you want, all that, you know, how your life isn't where you want to be, that can be stressful, that can bother the hell out of you. And often we become consumed with, like, what we don't have or what we lost or what we desire. And if we're constantly focusing on that, it's going to stress us out. It amplifies our stress levels. So what I like to do is focus on what it is that I have that I can be grateful for. If you're sitting and listening to me and you have nothing or you feel like you have nothing, you woke up today, you've got breath and you've got a heartbeat. 150,000 people didn't wake up today that were alive yesterday. That's something you could be grateful for. You're here, you're listening to this, and so can you focus on gratitude? The third thing is just go for a walk. Walking has a lot of therapeutic benefits for humans. Forward motion, seen through the eyes, actually starts to lower cortisol levels in your brain. And cortisol is a stress hormone. So simply going for a walk for 10 minutes without your phone, without headphones, because if you go for a walk and you're just looking at your phone the entire time, it's not going to help. You want to actually look forward and watch all of this stuff pass by your peripheral vision. That actually calms you down and lowers your cortisol. And so you just go for a walk for 10 minutes, disconnect from whatever it is that's actually stressing you out. And if possible, try to do it in nature. Being in nature has been shown to lower. Just being in nature itself has been shown to lower your cortisol levels. So if you can go for a walk, that's like a walk around a garden, or if you can find a little park that you can go walk around, that will lower your stress hormones as well. The natural environment that you're out in promotes a calming effect, which is also. It's called hope. I don't mispronounce this. Biphelia hypothesis is what it is, suggests that humans have an innate desire to connect with nature. And so walking in nature has been associated with decreased levels of depression. And really what it comes down to is, can you go out in the forest? Can you go out around trees? You know, there's a thing that's, that's called in Japan, it's called shin rin yoku. I don't hope I didn't destroy that. Which basically means forest bathing. It's a Japanese concept that translates to taking in the forest atmosphere or forest bathing. And it involves immersing yourself into a forest environment, be around trees. And it's been shown scientifically to lower physical and mental health problems. So if you feel like you have physical problems, if you feel like you have mental health problems, just being in nature tends to help a lot. So go for a walk in nature if you can. Hey, real quick, I want to introduce you to something called Mindset Mentor Plus. If you love this podcast, you will absolutely love what I'm about to talk about. I designed Mindset Mentor plus to help you actively integrate every one of these episodes into your life. And here's how it works. With every episode of this podcast that comes out, Mindset Mentor plus subscribers get more. You're going to get multiple page, detailed, printable worksheets, effectively a mini masterclass that's way more in depth than just this podcast. They also come with journaling, questions, challenges, assignments, and so much more so that you're not just listening to these podcasts passively, but you're actively integrating them into your life. That way you improve much faster. I also do monthly Q and A sessions in there and much, much more. If you want to learn more about it, go to mindsetmentor.com or click the link that's down in the description number four. Another thing that will help you is to write it out. Write it down, put it down, pen and paper, journal, all of it out. A lot of times the solution is way easier than you actually think that it is. There was a study that was done in 1986. It was called Confronting a Traumatic Event Toward Understanding of Inhibition and Disease. So Toward an Understanding of Inhibition Disease. People always ask, like, what's the names of these? I'm giving the actual names now, so you can look it up if you want to. But basically it was one of the pioneering studies in the area of research where they found the effect of writing down traumatic events. Now, we would think that we write down traumatic events or things that are stressing us out or whatever it might be, and it would make it worse. But what they found was that participants who wrote about traumatic experiences showed significant improvements in and physical and Physiological well being compared to those who wrote down about superficial topics, just, oh, this is how my day was today. And so when you can write down what it is that's stressing you out, what traumatic events that you can have, you actually have a lot more. First off, you feel like you have more control over it. Cause you can start to plan the things out. And then second, you realize that you're reprocessing all of these things in more of a positive way versus being. You know, if you had a traumatic event that happened to you seven years ago and you haven't, you've been trying not to think about it, of course it's gonna stress you out. But if you can go back and say, okay, now I've done a lot of healing over the past seven years, I'm gonna write about it. And now you can actually start to reprocess it. With all of the healing that you've done, that traumatic event from seven years ago doesn't have as much power over you. The more that you can write things down, the more that you can talk about it. It loses its power over you. Shame breeds in the dark. So the more that you leave it in the dark, the more it can control you. So that's number four. Number five. This is something that I would recommend that is a little bit different. Maybe not something you would have thought that I would talk about is actually try to get your blood levels checked. I had a time a couple years ago where I didn't feel like 100% for a few months. So a few years ago I was like, man, I feel like I'm operating at like 70% of my capacity. I don't know what's going on. And so I went to a doctor, a local doctor, and I was like, hey, I want to get my blood levels checked. So they did this crazy panel on me, Tons and tons and tons of blood tests on me. And everything was really good except for there was a specific vitamin B and vitamin D that I was low on. It wasn't like just, just vitamin B or just vitamin D. It was like specific ones. So doctor's like, okay, I'm gonna give you very specific stuff that you can take just drop size take in the morning. I took them in the morning. And literally within like three days, I felt like a completely different person. I was like, oh my God, this is crazy. I felt stressed and I felt anxious and I felt very low levels of energy throughout the day. I found what I was deficient in within three days. I felt like a Completely different person. I had more energy, I felt more positive, I felt more happy. It was wild. And so just a little side note, thing I would do is just get your blood levels checked and just see if maybe you're deficient on things, vitamins, minerals that you're not getting. So that's number five. Number six, you're not going to like this. Most people don't is consider less caffeine. If you are stressed and anxious throughout the day, well, you might be having too much caffeine and maybe what you should do is instead of having coffee, maybe switch to green tea. Try to remove caffeine from your life for a few days and just see what happens. For me, I've removed caffeine from my life and I did not have any sort of withdrawals from it, which, thank God, but sometimes people have withdrawals from it. So you could either just go cold turkey or and see if you have any withdrawals from it, or you could just go, hey, I'm going to have green tea. So I'm still getting some caffeine, but I'm not going to have as much because there's definitely a whole lot less in green tea. So cortisol, which is the brain's primary stress hormone, and the reason why is because when you have dopamine introduced into your brain, where there's cortisol, it buffers it and actually lowers your cortisol levels. And so people, when they laugh, if you're stressed out and you could get someone to laugh, usually it makes them feel a whole lot better because it actually decreases their cortisol levels inside of their brain. The other thing that it does is when you laugh, it releases endorphins and so laughter stimulates the production.