Secret Stress Management Tactic

I hope your week has been going well.

Today I’d like to share a “secret tactic” with you that I teach my private clients.  I hope you find it helpful.

Actually, there’s nothing “secret” about it!  There’s a good chance that you already do something similar.

My intention is that I provide something practical, useful, and actionable in every article that I write, for the purpose of supporting you in staying fresh and avoiding burnout, and in a larger sense, to deeply thrive in your life.

So here we go!  

What do we do when we feel ourselves starting to get overwhelmed, and feeling our stress level rising?  

I was definitely feeling this way yesterday.  I  had things coming at me fast and hard.  I’d imagine there’s been a time this week where you felt the same.  Some of you no doubt experience this on a daily basis.

Have you figured out what helps you to manage this rising stress and overwhelm?

Here’s one thing to try, my 3 steps.

By the way, these steps are simple but not easy.  So simple, in fact, that you’ll be tempted to blow them off because they don’t sound like much.  DON’T DO THAT!  These 3 steps form a very powerful package if practiced diligently to the point of getting good at it.

Step 1:  STOP

When you’re getting overwhelmed and too stressed out, just stop what you’re doing.  Put some space between yourself and what’s going on in the environment or in your head.  Disengage.

 Step 2:  BREATHE

“Ok here we go again.  Someone telling me to just breathe.”  Yeah that’s right!  Only it’s usually never about JUST breathing, but it definitely is a crucial step, whatever protocol you follow.

Why?  It’s brain science.  Deep breathing can activate our parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming us down and getting us out of fight-flight-freeze mode (yes indeed, many people are regularly in that FFF mode without realizing it, if they’re dealing with chronic stress).

Take at least one full, deep breath–full inhale, pause for a second, full exhale.  You may need to do more, but start with one.  We talked about Box Breathing in the last article–go one time around “the box”. 

Step 3:  THINK

The fact of the matter is that your “Thinking Brain”, or your cerebral cortex, starts shutting down when you’re really stressed out, because you’re moving into your “Survival Brain” (FFF), and don’t need to think, you just need to avoid the “threat” (at least that’s how our brains are wired).  But once you start doing some slower, fuller breathing, you begin calming down enough so you CAN think.

Think HOW?  Well, to get the ball rolling, zoom out and ASSESS your situation, and without doing any “catastrophic thinking”, identify the FACTS of the situation.  The facts–not the “fictions”, and not your opinions.  

And then, you can get clarity on what you can control and cannot control, and decide on what your next action step needs to be (re-read this last sentence–it doesn’t sound like much, but it is).

This is a start.  “Simple”, huh?

Despite these 3 steps being so simple, there is DEPTH to each of them that isn’t always obvious.  But we’ll leave it here, and come back to the finer details another time.

Though let me say a couple quick things before I sign off.

Sometimes my “Step 1” is “RECOGNIZE”.  Because technically we need to recognize when our stress “thermometer” is rising before we even know that we need to stop.  This has to do with increasing our self-awareness.

Again, simple, not easy.

And lastly, sometimes my final step after “Think” is actually “ACT”.  In other words, after I calm down, and assess the situation, and come up with next steps, I may have to take action on something, which will help decrease my stress.

So play around with this 3-step method, and make it your own! 

These are the kinds of things we talk about in our Renewal Lab that I shared about last week.  Consider signing up if this kind of information is helpful.

Until next time, be well!

– Sean Cox, Chicago