33. Avoid the Blowfish Brain: How to Stop Stress Fast

Have you ever had a good day? You're walking around, have a smile on your face, and then you decide, let me open my emails. You see that subject line, your heart starts beating. Uh-oh. You open the email, there's intense information, and you get overly emotional. You have cortisol flooding through your veins over an email. Why? Because you're in defensive mode, you're in reaction mode. And this is the old brain. I think we've all been there, whether it's an email or confrontation with someone or a situation. And I have 3 ways today to help you train the old brain to get you into making the conscious choice that empowers you. Welcome in. I'm Tony Suriano. I'm your leadership coach here. And I want to share these 3 ideas with you, and I will challenge you at the end to take them on, and I'll give you some examples. But first, I want to share this little anecdote about me in the Philippines that's relevant. I had the opportunity to live there for 6 months. The house was on the beach. I walked on that beach a lot, and there was 2 feet of water, went hundreds of feet out so I could go and see and observe the animal wildlife. The fish, the crabs, the blue starfish—it was beautiful. Now, I had a net one night. I wasn't going to eat the fish. I wasn't going to kill the fish. I just wanted to catch them and take a look and then put them back. So I picked up the net, and I saw this cute little fish, and it was called a pufferfish, also known as a blowfish. As I lifted it in the air, it started to expand. expand like 5 times its size. I've never seen one in person, and it kind of freaked me out. And then I realized, oh, this is bad for the fish. Okay, I'm done observing. It feels like it's just gonna explode. Let me put it back. I put it back. Now, the reason I shared that is because I found out that the pufferfish is having this defense mechanism so it can't be swallowed or to poke you or whatever it is. But if it's put through too much stress, unnecessary stress, being held in the air by a human, it actually could expand so much that its insides could be destroyed. It could actually blow itself up. Now, here's the thing. You can be destroyed by stress too. If you're put in stress too many times, too long, if it's prolonged stress, we all know stress is that killer that affects a lot of people. Come over to the whiteboard here. See this? This is my blowfish, the pufferfish. I drew it. If you are watching on YouTube, you can see it. If you're on the audio, check out YouTube. You'll like to see my drawing, I promise you. You'll make fun of me. Okay, so the first way to get out of this old brain, this amygdala hijacking, which basically doesn't know the difference between real threat like a tiger or a bear versus an emotional threat from an email, or if someone calls you a bad name or confronts you. So it doesn't know the difference. Now, while we can't destroy this part of our brain— I mean, we need it, sometimes it will serve us, not as much in this modern world— while we want to get rid of it, we don't, and we shouldn't. We should train it. And the first idea to train it, if you don't already do this, is journaling. Journaling is key. Why? Because it is proven to lower stress levels by 2 digits. Up to 2 digits! Wouldn't we all want a little less stress? Well, all you need to do is journal the feelings you're having about a situation or a situation you think is going to happen. It is shown that when you decompress or you release this valve of overwhelm through writing, even verbal journaling can work too if you want to record it or say it out loud to yourself. But I think writing is one of the best because it crystallizes the thoughts. It really gets it out of your head. And journaling is key also Because you can plan how you're going to react, or better yet, respond the next time something similar happens. So you don't want to just vomit your feelings. You want to have a little plan. You want to say, for example, you know, when I talk to the boss or the manager or my friend and we had that conversation, how— I'm sorry. She didn't like how I was acting in public, what I said. It kind of made me feel attacked. Now, I know I can't control how she tells me these things, but I can control how I respond. But I didn't respond well. I reacted in that situation, let's say, for this example. So if you journal the, the 1, 2, 3 feelings that you had, you're not only releasing the, the, um, valve, you're actually identifying what it was with description. And that's another thing— when you actually identify the feeling, like, I'm feeling rage, I'm feeling neglected, by labeling it, you get to pause a tad. And actually observe it. And when you observe it, you're less in it. This is what we call awareness. I think you know when you're aware, it's so much better. Because have you ever gotten to that situation where you get so angry, all you see is red and you're zoned in on this thing? People are showing you it's not a big deal but you feel it's a big deal. You feel like, The world's ending and you need rage. You don't want to get to that position. That disposition is a problem for you and those around you. Am I right? So journaling— label the feeling, vomit what you're feeling, and then make a little plan. Okay, I'm gonna just put plan here on the whiteboard, and you're set. You're already lowering stress levels. And when you get this awareness going, the next time you're in a situation, if you practice journaling enough, it starts to be subconscious and you will respond better and react less. Idea number 2, ready for this? Competence and confidence. What do I mean by that? I mean, the more we learn about a specific subject or a way to emotionally regulate, the more confident we are to practice it. The more confident we are to practice it. This is what they call the competence-confidence loop, and it's one of my favorite concepts because anything I've learned, this is what happened. For instance, I have mastered the Rubik's Cube. I solved it in 29 seconds. I'm proud. My average is around late 30 seconds. And the way I did it is I gained all this competence on one step. Then I got the step going and it allowed me to have confidence to try and learn the next step. If you can't relate to that, think about it. In a sport. Let's say you want to learn tennis. You're playing against someone, but you've never played. You're not going to want to play against them. But if you went aside with someone that taught you a couple of the basic skills and how you can build them, you might have that confidence to step in and play with them. Does that make sense? Did I put a word salad in that? I don't know, but I'm hoping you're following along. Competence and confidence. So how can you apply it to this? The old brain. If you're in a conversation of confrontation and if you feel you want to get angry or you want to shut down, I urge you to read some human behavior books. Read some emotional control books, regulation books. And once you gain that competence intellectually, you will develop more confidence practically. For instance, I've learned deep about thinking of situations as a third observer. And what I mean by that is if, if I'm having a conversation with someone and it gets heated, And this is what we're talking about, right? Because when something gets heated or something seems too big to handle, we either get angry or we shut down or we feel sad. And these are all vital, valid feelings, but we don't want to get lost in them too long. That's the goal, right? We want to let them flow through us and not stay with us for hours on end, because then how are we going to live our great life the rest of the day? Some people have this resentment for days, or this anger for days, months, years, because they haven't practiced these things. They don't have the competence to actually have the confidence. So once I started learning deep about third-party observer, being more aware, being a little more of that experimental excite— scientist, that was the competence. So then one day on a low-stakes situation, I started applying it. I started thinking, wow, if I was looking in at us, I might laugh because me and that person were trying to say the same thing, but it's kind of like a bickering, arguing. Like, I realize I'm sharing this information, but I— maybe I'm not communicating properly. But I realize as the third observer that they're saying basically the same thing. Have you ever been there? That's a lack of communication. And that's another reason for me personally to have studied and push, and I still do study communication more so I get the competence going. So then in the situation, I'll actually figure out how to use it and implement, which is then the confidence, and it becomes a loop. Are you following? Are you liking this? If you like this stuff, let me know in the comments. If it's too deep or strange, or if I'm not communicating well, let me know. So number 3, what is number 3? This is a main goal: build a pause between trigger and action. How do you build a pause between trigger and action, specifically in A situation of conflict. Let's go back to that email, because so many people will get an email and they'll react right away, and they'll send it and push send with anger, and then they get themselves in trouble. Then they get fired. Then they lose a relationship instead of communicating from a third observer or putting that pause between The trigger and action. So how do you do it? Like I said, journaling, if you do it long enough, it goes in the subconscious. So you start building this habit of pausing before sending. I got really good at this, and I got good at this because I really needed work on my communication, and I was aware of it. I would journal how I wasn't a great communicator, how I felt misunderstood. So I started to think, well, there's books out there. Let me get ahead. Let me learn how to talk better. Let me learn how to communicate better. And all of that flowed into my subconscious. So as I got an email or a text, yes, my heart might drop because my old brain triggers. Right? That amygdala gets hijacked, and I'm looking at this text, I'm like, uh-oh. And you start running. Oh, what if they think this? What if they do that? Why are they saying this? Why aren't they understanding me? But then quickly I shift over here and I ask myself, okay, what would my best self respond like? How would I communicate this best? And by asking these questions, you're actually creating a pause between the trigger and the action. So how can you create your own pause so you don't get into the hijacking of your amygdala and so you can train it to empower you? That's a question. Here, these are some tips, and I want you, and I challenge you to take on these tips. If you don't journal, do it. 7 days. Give it a chance. I would say even 14 days if you've never journaled before. You might hate it for a while, but I promise by day 14, if you journal and you expand on the ideas I'm talking about here, you will have a little more relief, a lot more awareness, and your subconscious is always listening. So if you plan how you best should act, how you should act Best. It will help. And back to the competence and confidence loop. What could you learn this next month that would help you get more confident in a conflict situation? Because that's what it is, isn't it? Most of the time we freak out, we get angered, we have sadness When there's a conflict between one human and another. I mean, that's what makes us human. But wouldn't it feel so much better to be able to handle that where you and the other person or people can actually walk away feeling better than before instead of worse and letting the worseness linger on for hours on end? And then you go into a weekend and you don't know why. You're feeling long and sad and depressed. Training your old brain so you can make that empowering, conscious decision is part of directing your life, directing your next conflict, because you're going to have another one. You can't avoid these conflicts. So how are you going to be? Are you going to let the cortisol come in, take over your weeks, Or are you gonna have awareness by journaling? You're gonna learn those new skills and implement them. You're gonna be the third-party observer. I know that you'll benefit from this, so take on the challenge, take it seriously, get going. Let me know in the comments what you think and share this episode with anyone that you think needs to hear it. Also, remember, don't be the pufferfish. Don't explode yourself to death with unnecessary stress. It's not worth it. You deserve more, so get out there and direct your life. Thank you.