Introduction
Hi, I’m Max, a professional life, relationship & career coach.
Here’s a question for you – what are the biggest points of stress in your life?
Your kids?
Your business?
Your finances?
Your health?
Pick one and choose.
Stress is one of the most common symptoms in contemporary Western culture. And unfortunately, we have a very dysfunctional relationship with stress, deeming it as “normal” or “natural” – wrong. This is not a grounded assessment. Western culture does a terrible job of educating us on our emotional responses in the human nervous system. Let me put it to you like this, if your body is fighting an illness, it tells you through the feeling of being sick. If your knee is injured, it tells you through the feeling of pain. If you are dehydrated, your body tells you through a feeling of thirst. Your body is communicating with you! And your emotions work in the exact same way!
So the question is, what is your stress attempting to communicate?
In today’s reading, we are going to be focusing on three crucial and common insights that have come from my experience working with high-performing clients – and I trust that if you are someone who has ever struggled with stress in any area, these insights will be valuable for you also.
Insight Number One) Avoid Making Key Decisions In States Of High Stress
An important immediate note – this is always something that I will encourage clients to do before they develop the strategies to understand and master their stress, usually at the beginning of their program. As stress is often causing damage in their life at the time of entering the program.
When we do not have sufficient strategies to deal with stress and it often gets us in its grasp, it can create distortions in our perceptions, leading to ineffective decisions. One of the most important insights in neuro-linguistic programming is this – In different states, different decisions are available to us. And the state of high stress is a highly unresourceful state. We can often react, speak from fear, say things we don’t mean, and potentially damage both our business and personal relationships. So, whenever possible, particularly if you’ve noticed this pattern before, if a state of high stress emerges, make the active decision to disengage from the conversation or activity, momentarily of course.
For example, in relationships, there can be a tipping point in a conflict filled conversations whereby stress levels can get too high, to the point where hurtful things can get said if we aren’t careful. In this example, it is far more effective to disengage from the conversation for a moment to mitigate any potential damage to your partner or to the relationship. Of course, also mentioning that “I’m struggling to control my stress, let me just take a moment to settle as I don’t want to cause any harm in this conversation” can also go a long way.
Think of an example from your own life where it may have been more appropriate to disengage. Now look forward to your next week, what could be the potential opportunity to practice disengagement?
Insight Number Two) It Is Impossible To Get Control Of Stress Through Thinking
While disengaging is a viable option at times, there are other occasions where we can’t disengage. And that brings us to developing strategies that manage stress in the moment when disengaging is not an option. States of high stress have a tendency to create fear-inducing responses in our cognitive patterns, scrambling our thoughts. And so, attempting to settle our stress through thinking is like trying to smooth rough water with your hands, you’re only going to make it worse. So we need a different access point to regain our composure that comes from outside our thinking.
The answer is to gain control of our body, not our mind, by gaining control of the breath. When we deliberately deepen our breathing, our physiological responses change. However, it takes at least five deep breaths for our thoughts to begin settling. Try it with me now! Wherever you are, take five deep breaths, consciously, placing all attention on the breath, once you have, move on to the next paragraph below. A quick visualization that can help accompany deeper breathing – imagine your stress being a fire, your breath is water washing over the flames, like the ocean.
And inevitably what you’ll now notice is that your state has changed! So simple! A second key insight that is crucial when using this technique – LEAVE YOUR MIND ALONE. Don’t try to change it, let it be. Simply focus on the breath, any intermediate mediator will tell you the same thing.
Insight Number Three) Listen To Your Stress, Don’t Fight It
This is the most advanced insight in today’s reading, and it may go over the heads of many readers, but it would be remiss of me not to include it. As we discussed in the introduction of today’s reading – your emotional responses are your body’s attempt to communicate with you. So, rather than fighting it, listen to your body, what is it attempting to tell you?
Stress often carries a very consistent message, and that message is this – THERE IS SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T DONE, THAT WOULD HELP YOU TO DO. That’s it, really quite simple. Stress comes from a lack of action, not from anything else. Usually, when human beings have done every single thing in their power to create an outcome, they are at peace, as there is nothing left to do. Your emotional system is letting you know that there is more that can be done.
“But Max, there’s always more to do! I’ve got so much to do you wouldn’t even believe it!” – Read my Brutal Time Management blog post, that may help. But more importantly, even just understanding that your body is letting you know you have more to do can create a new relationship with your stress. So, give yourself targets for each day that if you hit, you can give yourself permission to alleviate your body from stress – The Power Of Setting Intentions blog post is also valuable reading. But if you find yourself overcommitted and stress has you in its grasp, focus your attention – ask yourself, what is the one thing that I can do today that will have the greatest impact on my productivity?
Stress is your body communicating with you, letting you know that there’s something you haven’t done that would help you. Never forget that.
The human emotional system is critical to master to live a meaningful, fulfilled, and effective life. If any of this resonates with you, I’d encourage you to reach out to me, let’s have a complimentary 30-minute conversation.
Max. Life Coach.
