Ep#16 From Distress to Eustress: Understanding and Managing Stress

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Episode 16 • 30th August 2024 • The Women's Room - Legal Division • Erica Handling

Hi everyone. And welcome to the Women's Room Legal Division podcast. Before we go any further today, I would just like you to shake out your hands, shake out your arms, maybe move your shoulders backwards and forwards, up and down, move your mouth, move your face, shake everything out.

And then I want you to take a really Deep inhale through your nose. And then a big sigh out. Drop your shoulders down, relax everything. Now you know what I'm asking you to do. Let's have another go. So let's do a really deep inhale right to the bottom of your lungs. Inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale, and then sigh.

Let it all out. Relax. Lift up your chest. And hopefully you'll feel a bit better, a bit more oxygen running around your system. and the reason I wanted to you to do that today is because today we are going to talk about stress and in particular, tips and strategies for building resilience for stress and managing stress in the moment.

So, stress. What is stress? So we, it's definitely a word we use a lot nowadays. It's almost become a badge of honor for people to say, Oh, I'm just so stressed. I'm so busy. I'm so needed. but what does it really mean? And is it always bad? So it comes from a middle English word distress, which itself comes from a Latin word, which is distress.

which means to draw tight. So you can sort of get the feeling of where stress comes from. And originally, it was only really applied in physics and engineering. and one of the definitions that was used in that context was the internal distribution of force exerted on a material body resulting in strain, which really could apply just as much to a human being.

ecent, definition from around: 2011

So really it's all about is demand. Exceeding capacity. and that's definitely a really neat way to think about stress because we can be under huge pressure. We can be working really hard dealing with something really difficult, but we can be feeling reasonably. Okay. About it. It's really when. when the demand of what we're going through exceeds the capacity that, that we end up in stress.

And what stress really means is that something has come along that's knocked us out of something called homeostasis. You've probably heard about homeostasis. It's sort of the baseline that we need to be, or the parameters that we need to be in this warm blooded Mammals in order to survive. And it's interesting because homeostasis doesn't apply to cold blooded animals.

They have to evolve in order to adapt to their environment. Whereas we as human beings, our bodies can actually adapt. To our environment. So I guess the most obvious, obvious one is, is temperature above certain levels will die below, certain levels will die. And so our body will do things to help us like sweating when we're too hot or or shivering when we are too whole cold.

So really important to remember. We're stressed that it's all about the body doing whatever it can to. to survive. So what happens within our brains and our bodies when a stressor comes along? Well, the first thing that happens is our fight or flight center is triggered. This is part of the autonomic nervous system reacting, and it's actually the sympathetic nervous system that's reacting. This is where the fight or flight center is.

the parasympathetic nervous system is the other part. of the autonomic nervous system, and that's often referred to as the rest or digest system. That's the system we really want to activate, and get working in order to help us counteract the impact of stress. I find those two words actually quite difficult to remember because for me sympathetic is, It's all about, oh, sympathetic.

That should be the one that helps you. so the way I try and remember that is parasympathetic. It's like the paramedics coming in. So if you need to remember the difference between the two, that is how I do it. So, so what is actually happening in the sympathetic nervous system? So something called the amygdala, is triggered.

The vital flight center is at the bottom of our brainstem. It's sort of, there are actually two of them around here in our, in our brains, really close to the brainstem so it can communicate to the rest of the body. the electrical signals coming out of the amygdala stimulate the chemical side of our body, something called the HPA axis, which consists of the hypothalamus, the pituitary glands, and the adrenal glands.

And, various hormones are released and travel across the bloodstream in order to prompt our adrenal glands to release cortisol. and we've, most of us will probably have heard about cortisol and we probably think of cortisol as something bad, something that gets built up when when we're pregnant. when we are stressed or too stressed, but in fact, cortisol isn't all bad at all.

In fact, it's a, it's a great helper to our body. And most of the cells in our bodies have cortisol receptors within them. So cortisol helps, balance our blood sugar levels, regulates metabolism. Reduces inflammation and fights infection, helps assist with memory formulation, balances our ratios of salt and water, regulates blood pressure, and even supports the development of a foetus during pregnancy.

So it's a pretty, amazing thing to have in the body, but too much of it, is, is not necessarily good. So the cortisol that's released when we're stressed or when we're in an alarm situation, basically. triggers the liver to release glucose. And what the brain really wants to function is glucose. So it's looking for more glucose in order for it to react more quickly to what's going on.

Whereas, it will send instructions to the body to release fat cells into the body. So that's the energy that the body and the muscles are going to rely on to run away or take action. And many, many other things will be happening when we're in this alarm state. And it's probably one of the things that I find.

Most amazing when researching about stress is just how incredible the human body is in terms of reacting and trying to protect us. So the adrenaline will raise our heart rate and our blood pressure and get oxygen to our muscles. All our peripheral blood vessels will shut down so that blood's diverted to our vital organs

and that's why sometimes you'll see people's skin go pale when they're scared, the blood will thicken and that'll help it carry more oxygen, but also help with clotting. If you're injured, if you have a, if you have an injury or a cut, your muscles will tense and get ready for action. the air passages in your lungs will dilate, to again, get more oxygen into the bloodstream.

what else? So the sweat glands will be activated. So you might feel clammy when you're scared or nervous, and that's really to help cool your muscles. And then all sorts of digestive things will go on. So hydrochloric acid is dumped into the stomach that helps dissolve food quicker, makes it easier to run away.

All of the digestion processes are shut down as the blood's diverted elsewhere. And we know what happens sometimes when people are really scared or animals are really scared. There's a level of incontinence. And again, it's just getting rid of everything that we don't need to allow us to react to. What might cause us harm and that includes your mouth going dry.

So often again, when you're nervous, you'll notice your mouth going dry. So that's stopping any extra fluids going into your stomach. So it's, it's pretty amazing what the body can do to react. and actually that's a good thing because if we are in danger. Or if we've got a really challenging situation, we've got to deal with, we want the body to react like that so that we can be in peak performance mode in order to react.

So this is really what I want you to think about with stress. I think generally nowadays we think stress is a bad thing, but some level of stress. is actually really good. We'd call it eustress, EU stress, eustress. and there's been a bit of a change in terminology when people are talking about homeostasis and stress.

So sometimes you might hear people talk about a new concept called, or newish concept called allostasis or allostatic overload. When they talk about allostatic overload, that's what they're talking about in terms of being To stress stressed out, and the reason they've started using this terminology is because they want to distinguish between good stress and bad stress.

But it's, you know, that's not important. You might just hear it. So some level of stress is really good. If we have no stress, no arousal in our body, we'll just be sort of sitting in a lump, not reacting to anything. And there is a concept that was developed, looking at a curve around what on that curve is the peak level of stress and arousal that human beings need in order to perform at their best.

And it's called the, the Yerkes Dodson Law. Yerkes is Y E R K E S. You can look it up. Yerkes Dodson Law or Yerkes Dodson curve, sometimes human function curve. And what this says is if you're in these lower levels where you're not really aroused or interested at all, you're sort of in a drone zone, you're demotivated, you're bored, you're not interested in anything.

And then as the stress levels go up, you reach a level of peak performance, but then it starts tipping over into a level where your performance is going to diminish. and one of the ways they discovered this, I'm afraid, is that they used rats in an experiment. and they found that rats could be motivated to find their way out of a maze with slight, short electric shocks, not too, not too big, but give them too much stress, too many shocks, and they just start running around, willy nilly and can't find their way out.

and the level of stress we need depends on on many things, but depends on the activity that we're doing. Obviously, the task complexity, but also a little bit our personality and our self confidence. But if you think about it, The level of stress that someone like a sprinter needs before they sprint off in the Olympics is going to be different to a basketball player, because a sprinter can have a lot of stress applied before the race, because what they've got to do is go and run in a straight line, whereas a basketball player, it's much more sophisticated, more complex, the, what the brain and the body is going to be having to do during the match.

So too much stress before and during the match is not going to be good. And if you, I'm sure that you will have come across times when you've been in an exam or performing and for some reason your performance goes to pot. And this can sometimes, despite the fact you really, really want to do well, in fact, because of the fact you really, really want to do well.

So you're putting a lot of And maybe there's just too much stress and you've tipped over into this area where performance diminishes. So one of the, one of the times when people are most stressed is when they're doing any form of public speaking. there's, I've got a podcast and a video with some tips about.

How to get more comfortable with public speaking. So have a look at that. but one of the little tips that you can use is that if you look at something, like a picture of your family or a pet or some videos of, I'd look at videos of cats, that just something that makes you go, Oh, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

that will release something called oxytocin into your bloodstream, and that's known as the sort of human cuddle drug. And what that will do is reduce the cortisol levels. It will reduce the stress and allow you to come back into that peak performance mode. So try it. Try it out. See, instead of like desperately reading through your notes again, just try taking a breath, looking at something that makes you feel lovely inside and see if that really works.

Helps you. what about too much stress? So bad stress. So bad stress consists of things that we're all familiar with. So something around like worry, which is where we suspect, but we're not entirely sure that something bad might be about to happen. fears where we. assume that something bad is going to happen, but we're not really sure how bad.

So that's when we'll start thinking about things like fear, panics, when an element of time comes in because we haven't got time, have we got time to react and get everything done? And then anxiety is a bit more like the definition of stress. So we think there's a way out. We think there's a possibility things might be okay, but we're worried about our capability.

and, and whilst the body is incredibly well adapted, as I said, to deal with stress, it's not meant to last indefinitely. And what happens is when the cortisol levels are high in the blood, then the receptors in the hypothalamus and hippocampus in your brain can tell it's there and they keep looking for threats.

So whilst you are stressed, then your brain's going to keep looking around, scanning the horizon to say, is it safe? Is it safe? Is it safe? Once it's safe, then everything will go back to normal. but until then you'll be in this cycle of repeated stress. and one of the interesting things is that, The Buddhists have this concept of something called the second arrow, and that's all about how the first arrow, you're walking along and an arrow comes and hits you in the arm, it's painful, you react.

But then a second arrow comes and that second arrow is really your thinking reaction. So you're suddenly thinking, Oh my God, I've been hit by an arrow. What's going on? Am I being attacked? Is something really bad going to happen? That's all in your head. You don't know what's going on. It's not a physical reaction.

It's a second arrow. And that's one of the things we do is we create a lot of stress with the story that we're telling ourselves about what has happened to us. And in fact, one of the pieces of research that I've read says that between an alarm or a stressor or an event happening, there is 90 seconds when the body has a physiological response.

But after that, it goes back to baseline, unless you hold on to what's happened. So you're holding on to an emotion of anger, fear. and, and that's what's happening after the 90 seconds. That's the second arrow. Now, is that true? I don't know. There's been research done on it. That's the, these were their findings.

Is it true if you're in extreme pain? I'm not sure. but it's definitely worth, worth understanding that you may be creating some of your stress. And there's an amazing, psychiatrist who wrote a beautiful book called, he's called Victor Frankel. He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. he was interred into a, into Auschwitz during the war.

And obviously he saw terrible, terrible things, went through terrible things, but he was really interested in trying to understand why some people were able to survive something as terrible as Auschwitz in reasonable. Sort of mental and emotional conditions, whereas other people were completely understandably completely destroyed by it.

And what his, what he says is between stimulus, so an event between stimulus and response, there is a space and there's a space for us to make a choice. And that choice is all about the story that we tell ourselves. So he used himself as an experiment. He, he examined, could he. Could he find pleasure in the smallest, smallest things during his day?

Could he take himself to different places in his imagination where he would be less stressed? So he'd think about the future. He'd think about seeing his wife again. Was there something that you could do to help you deal with the situation? This is a great thing to understand in terms of dealing with stress.

Think about what are you saying to yourself? And I'll talk about this later in the stress tips. What's the story you're telling yourself, about what has happened to you? So, so too much stress is really bad for you. Cortisol in your system for too long actually becomes really harmful. So instead of helping you fight infection, helping, reduce inflammation, it starts creating inflammation and eventually starts leading to quite serious diseases like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, cancer, obesity, stomach ulcers.

And one of the interesting things, one of the interesting things that they've now discovered vegetables stop eating That stress will do is it will, it will actually change your gene expression. So what's going on in your genes quite quickly, which will make you more susceptible to illness. It will also change these things called telomeres, which if you've done any reading or listen to any podcasts about longevity, you'll have heard about these things called telomeres.

Telomeres, they're these little protective caps on the ends of your chromosomes. and if they're long, that's good. If they're shorter, then that's not so good. And, and what happens with stress is it makes them shorter. That then goes on to damage these things called our mitochondria, which are sort of like the batteries in our cells.

So it means our cells start aging and start being damaged. And that will lead to the onset of early. you know, diseases and potentially early death. now when I tell people things like that, like stress is long term chronic stress is really bad for you. You might feel like it's motivating you. You might feel like there's no choice, but ultimately it's going to be really, really bad for your body and your mind and in terms of how you're going to age.

but it's a bit like telling people that smoking's bad for you. It just doesn't feel real in the moment. But there is one area where I find if I tell people this will make a difference. It's like, I'm afraid, maybe, maybe it's everyone I know is quite shallow. If I tell people it's going to make a difference to the way you look, then people will pay more attention.

It feels more immediate. So there is definite. evidence that being under stress will make you put on weight. So sometimes when people are really stressed, they'll lose weight and that's because they actually stop eating. They stop consuming calories, but actually what it will do is it'll mean you stop sleeping well.

It'll mean you stop putting on weight because you're driven to comfort foods. You're looking for high sugar and fat. The body actually slows the metabolism down because it's saving resources for survival. And it stores that fat in the abdominal area. And what you'll find is the hunger stimulating hormone ghrelin will increase, so you'll get hungrier.

And then the appetite suppressing hormone leptin will go down, so that means you won't feel full. Those, these are the two hormones that you might have heard about with all the new,all the new drugs around, like a Zempik that start to control appetite. They're working on these hormones. But what it means is you're going to feel hungry, and you're going to feel hungry for longer, and you're going to eat more, and it's all going to be stored in your abdomen.

So we probably want to avoid that. and it's worth thinking about if you feel like you're under chronic stress, it's worth doing some deeper research into why is it, why is it that you are, Putting yourself under this much pressure. is it, is it really all external? Is there pressure that you're putting on yourself?

And I won't go into this now. I'll go into it in another podcast, but things like people pleasing, perfectionism, having unrealistically high expectations. You know, wanting to be the absolute best, having a sense of achievement that's tied to hard work or achievement being a strategy for regulating other feelings, continuously raising the bar.

All those sorts of things are going to lead you to put yourself under too much stress. And there will be warning signs that you can look out for. So, look at your body, like your body, your body is amazing. As I said, and there's an incredible book written by someone called Bessel van der Kolk and he, he, what he talks about is how trauma.

is actually stored in the body. Amazing book. I'd really recommend that you read it. The body keeps the score. So your body will send you signals when the stress is getting too much. So you might start getting headaches. Your sleep might be disturbed. Your pulse might be rapid. You might start feeling sick a lot of the time or something's going on with your indigestion.

You might be sweating more or flushing or your skin might start breaking out. So, so your body will be sending you warning signals to say, hold on a minute, this is getting too much. We need to make a change. behavioral changes. So you might lose your appetite or you might eat a lot more. You might become careless or impatient.

you might be low energy, find it really difficult to produce. or you might actually do the opposite and you might go become hyperactive. and then obviously your mood might change. So if you feel like you're just not yourself, so you're feeling anxious, sad, grumpy, you want to withdraw from socialization, social situations, avoid situations.

That's a very good sign that something's going on that you need to pay attention to. Your, your self esteem's feeling low, you're feeling guilt or shame. All of those things mean you should have a look at what's going on. Are you putting yourself under too much pressure? Do you need something to do something to relieve the stress?

and then I guess with thoughts and perception, are you finding it difficult to make decisions? Do you just feel like everything's a bit muddled, a bit vague? There's a sort of fog. Are you catastrophizing? So are you overreacting to events? Do you find it impossible to be, Are you being overly creative?

Are you rushing to decisions? Are you being oversensitive to any form of criticism? So all of those things are things to really watch out for. And I would add, from my own experience, I would add saying things to yourself like, If I just work a bit harder, I'll get it all done. If only there were more hours in the day, but if I just work a bit harder, then I'll get it done.

Starting to cancel things. So as soon as you see yourself starting to cancel things, because you're like, if I just do more, then I'll get it all done. So you stop exercising. You, in particular, you start cancelling all of your social engagements, anything you do for pleasure, because those are really, really important in terms of maintaining resilience for stress.

And then obviously overreacting to small problems. And eventually all this, as I said earlier, can lead to much more extreme,extreme problems in terms of physical problems and in terms of, mental health problems. And I'm going to talk here a little bit about my own story in terms of stress. and this is that I went through a phase, I guess it's probably around 15 years ago, where it all just got too much for me.

And one day I said, I cannot go into work anymore. I became completely hysterical the night before, couldn't carry on anymore. and went off the next morning to see a psychiatrist. He said, I'd like you to come into hospital. I was like, no, no, I can't. I've got 3 children. so what I did was I went into hospital every day and I went to group therapy.

I had therapy and, it was, it was the best thing. the, that has ever happened in my life, obviously the worst thing as well, and, and particularly bad for everyone back in the office because I literally, just stopped going in. I couldn't talk to anyone, so they were all left with all my deals, didn't know what was going on.

so really difficult for them, but really great for me in terms of learning. And, and what's really interesting is it wasn't like a big thing that tips me over the edge. It was something around. I couldn't get my computer or my printer or something to work because I remember I had to get some comments to someone, on a Sunday night and I just couldn't do it.

I couldn't get it to work and it just all became way too much. And I basically exploded and then collapsed in a heap and couldn't carry on. But it made me see that one of the biggest things it made me see is that everything carried on without me. I'm sure it was really difficult initially, trying to get up to speed with what I'd left behind, but actually it all carried on without me.

and it was fine. It didn't need me. I wasn't that important. In fact, I've been quite arrogant thinking that I was so important that I absolutely had to do these things. And if I didn't, the world would fall apart. fall apart because the world didn't fall apart. So that was my, probably my greatest learning.

And I was, I did group therapy and I was very, very unsure about group therapy, but actually I found it amazing, like sitting and listening to what other people were going through and then trying to, to think about what could I say that might help them. It was an amazing experience. also really interesting that all the lawyers were depressed and anyone who worked in advertising or PR, seemed to have a problem with addiction to sex or alcohol.

so it was really interesting to see the different job types and the, and the results that people were, were dealing with, it really taught me so, so much. and, and probably Lead me to the path of coaching and being interested in psychology. And in particular, how do you manage stress? And when I was coming back to work, so I was off for about 3 or 4 weeks.

I thought about what was I going to say? Because it did happen to people. It was. known as a nervous breakdown in those days. and generally there was sort of a wall of silence when people came, would come back into the office and it would be, oh, they've just suffered from exhaustion. but I took the decision.

It was hard. I took the decision that I was going to tell people what really happened. and at that point, mental health was just becoming too big. to get more publicity and become more recognized as an issue that shouldn't be associated with shame. And they'd been, I think, a CEO of one of the major banks, the head of the FCA, they'd both been off with stress.

And, and so I told people what had happened and that was amazing as well, because then a lot of people came and shared their stories with me in confidence. They felt then they suddenly had someone to talk to because whatever people look like on the outside, you never know. What's going on underneath. So, so when you are stressed, sharing how you're feeling is incredibly important, incredibly useful as well.

So that's one of my tips, in terms of like, just talk about it, tell someone how you're feeling before you get to the state, that I got into. So now I'm going to move on to some tips for how do you deal with stress.

So there are some basics that will make every aspect of our lives better. If we can really work on optimizing them, I think we all largely know what they are, but I'll, I'll go through them. I might talk about a couple of them in a bit more detail. In terms of, of the tips that I'm going to go through, but the basics are really whatever you can do to optimize your sleep, your nutritional intakes or your diet.

doing some level of exercise, getting out in nature, making sure you have social connection, and then some form of mindfulness that's going to bring you into the present moment. So you don't spend your time in the past or the future the whole time, but you come into the present. And there's lots of podcasts and reading you can do about all of these things out there.

We all sort of know them. I'd particularly recommend Matthew Walker in terms of sleep. but, but we all know that these are things that we need to make as good as possible. but they're hard to actually achieve and they're particularly hard to achieve when you're under pressure and you just don't have a lot of time.

But if you can get those things down and get them into a really good shape or just make one step towards better whenever you can. Then you'll be in a really good place in terms of your resilience and, and how to deal with stress.

And then I talked earlier about Viktor Frankl and about between stimulus and response, there is a space where you can make a choice about the story that you're telling yourself. And this second arrow that comes in where it's us sort of holding onto the stress or telling ourselves bad things. So just try and think about like, what are you saying to yourself?

What are you, what is it you're, what are you telling yourself? Because your body and your brain are going to be listening to what you're saying. so are you, are you saying really negative things to yourself? I just can't do it. I can't bear it. I can't stand it. There's no way I'm going to get through this.

Can you change the story to. I'm feeling challenged now, but this is going to make me stronger, or this will all be over soon, or it's just a job. can you say something that will be more rational and not as extreme and not so negative in your head? and it was really interesting recently in terms of seeing this in operation.

I was on a plane and someone started having a panic attack. I went over and was, we were, we were getting ready to take off and it was that that was freaking her out. unfortunately then got held on the runway for ages. So I was working with her in terms of breathing. I have an app that you can breathe along to, just to try and get her to get away from what was going on in her head because what was going on in her head was she was saying again and again, she was saying, I can't do this.

I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. And it was just so interesting to see her brain. just telling herself again and again and again, I can't do this. I can't do this. You know, I tried to get her to say, I've got this, I've got this. She, she was just in no state where she was going to be able to do that.

So the most basic thing we could do is breathing. and I'll come back to that later to talk about how breathing can really help, but just really think about what are the words you're using? How extreme are they? How negative are they? Can you change them? And there's sort of a long similar lines.

There's, I again, we'll do a podcast on this fully because it's something that I really love. I talked to all my coaches about, and it is a metaphor that was created by someone called Professor Steve Peters, called the Chimp Paradox. And this is all about how we have, we have various bits of our brain, but the two main bits I want to talk about now are, The chimp part of our brain, that's the fight or flight center, the, limbic emotional center that I was talking about earlier.

First part of the brain to develop in terms of evolution of human beings, first part of the brain to develop when we're born, so up and about, up to about two and a half. And that bit of the brain is there to help us. Protect us from danger. So it's always looking around for what might cause us problems.

And it tends to catastrophize because it really wants us to pay attention when it thinks there's a problem. it also likes, pleasure and has a bit of lack of impulse control. So it's a bit like a toddler, but it's there is very vigilant and it's called the chimp, but it's a paradox because we really need it because we need it to protect ourselves when we are in danger.

If we're in a jungle, we see a tiger, we need to run away. But actually there aren't many jungles or tigers around nowadays that we're having to deal with. And yet we are quite often still in this adrenalized sort of chimp mode. So then as we get older, the prefrontal cortex part of our brain starts to develop.

That's the rational part of our brain, which Steve Peters calls the human. And so you're like, okay, well, I'm just going to use the rational part of my brain to control my chimp. But unfortunately the chimp is way stronger and all the blood flow goes to that chimp part of your brain first when something happens, because it needs to, because it's going to get a help you when you need to react to something bad that's happened.

So what you need to do with this. with the chimp side of your brain is to manage it. So you could distract it. so you could go off on a walk, you could do something different, try and calm it down, or you can manage it and talk to it. And it's a bit like, again, this voice in, in your head. So the chimp will be saying, Oh my God, it's all going to go horribly wrong.

You can't do this. You can't do this. You're going to be a failure. And then you need to come up with some rational statements. And Steve Peters talks to his chimp out loud, so you can even do it out loud or write it down. writing things down is incredibly helpful because the, the writing is often coming from the emotional side of your brain and your rationals.

The rational side of your brain will be analyzing what you're putting down on paper. And, and if you write it down, you've got it there for, forevermore and you can go back to and you'll be quite surprised at what you've written sometimes. So, so just think about, Oh, is that my chimp telling me I need to be where actually, you know what, chimp, I've got this.

It's actually okay. and one of the things to ask yourself is actually, is it real? Is this threat real? Is it really a tiger or is it something else? Is that a stick in the past or is it a snake? And our imaginations are amazing. coming up with all sorts of scenarios that are really terrible. Mo Gorda, who's written a book called Unstressable, is also a great guy to listen to, ex CEO of Google X.

He talks about the Netflix of unhappiness. Like we have, an endless ability to create terrible things to go and draw on when we think that something bad might happen. So let's turn off our Netflix of unhappiness. Let's really ask ourselves, is it real? How likely is this thing going to happen? So it might be real, but how likely is it actually really unlikely?

And actually, do I really know what it is that I fear when I'm going up to give a presentation? What is it I fear? Often it's just a big black hole where we think something bad might happen, but what is it and how likely is it? To happen. Now, if you decide it is real and it is very likely to happen, then you can ask yourself, is there anything I can do to fix it?

Or is there anything I can do to, improve the situation? Because if you start doing, taking action to fix something or to improve it, then the chimp part of your brain will calm down because it's like, Okay, you've got this. I can see you're taking steps to make things. Okay. Even if it's just formulating a plan for what you could do to make things better, it will calm your brain down and it will start reducing stress.

And then if there's really nothing you can do, you've explored every option or you've taken that one step towards better. Can you accept it? And acceptance is one of the hardest things that we have to deal with as human beings because the chimp bit of our brain just doesn't like it. It wants to have everything its own way.

It wants to have everything perfect. So acceptance is really hard, but sometimes we just have to accept. That life isn't fair. We know that, and yet we really rail against it. So thinking about, can I accept it? Obviously, if it's, if you're being mistreated in some way, it's never, acceptance isn't the way to be going.

But if it's something that's really difficult about life, or you're dealing with someone who's just really difficult and unpleasant, you don't have control. So ask yourself, is this something I can control or influence if it isn't? Then maybe you need to let it go. And there is, a behavioral therapy called radical acceptance that really helps people with very, you know, the most difficult of human sufferings.

So losing a loved one, being involved in war or something terrible. It's about, can I, can I just accept that this is something, this is reality. This is something that happened and then move on with the rest of my life. I've talked a bit about actually some stress is good, and stress is good. It's not all bad.

And so one thing that there's been quite a lot of research around that can be really helpful is to actually view stress as an asset. So if you start feeling stressed, then recognize the sign. So you're about to. Do a presentation and jump out of a plane. You'll feel your heartbeat is raised. You know, your, your, your palms are getting sweaty.

It's the body doing all those things I talked about earlier to get you into peak performance mode. So instead of going, Oh my God, I'm so stressed, I'm so stressed. Maybe it's like, Oh, look at my amazing body is doing all these things to really help me so that I'm going to be able to perform amazingly. So, so there have been quite a lot of, there've been studies around.

getting people going into exams to think about how they're feeling and to say, Oh, this is great. My body's reacting this way because it's going to help me do even better in the exam. And then the people who, who have that mindset going in then do better in the exam. So again, try it out. If you feel stressed, don't do the normal conversation.

Oh my God, I'm so stressed. Go. Okay. This is really interesting. My body's really helping me. My body's tuning up, to perform. That's, that's fantastic. And I've talked about writing things down, how I really, I think writing things down, you can write them on the computer. I think writing them with your hand has an even greater effect.

, so journaling is another great way to relieve stress. So, Think about at the end of the day, or sometimes at the beginning, can you write down what happened yesterday? Can you write down how you're feeling? Getting your thoughts onto paper is, an amazing stress reliever. And then you can go back and analyze what you've written and you can say, okay, how real was that?

What happened? What did I learn from that? So try a bit of journaling, and, and you can go one step further and maybe create a stress inventory. so what is everything in your life that you feel is causing you stress? write them all down, from the big to the little, little stressors can actually sap us of energy.

So. If you've got a messy desk or your bedroom's not very restful, is there anything you can do to make your surroundings more restful and less stressful? so can you put things into a cupboard, shove them under your bed, you know, do some filing, put things in boxes, anything that's not going to distract your mind.

And you'll have heard about various tech titans who always wear the same thing every day. They're doing that because it takes much less energy. They want to use all their energy for thinking of amazing. innovations, they don't want to be thinking about what they're going to wear. So they're small stressors.

Can you do anything to get rid of them? And then writing down everything that could, that makes you stress looking at it and going, okay, are they real? What can I do? Can I get rid of one? Can I say, no, actually, I said yes to this, but I'm now going to say no to this. I'm going to. I'm going to literally delete it from the list.

So there's an obligation that I'm not going to do that anymore. I've got too much on, or I'm going to move out the timing. So it doesn't have to be so black and white. Can you delay it? Can you write to a client and say, you know what? I think it's going to take me a week longer. Is that okay? And, and you'd be amazed how often they say, yes, that's fine.

They just want to be communicated with. And then if you can't, Get rid of it. Then can you do this thing of circling it and seeing, can I make one step towards better to reduce the stress? So, so sometimes, writing things down in a list and saying like, is this really necessary, like whose voice do I hear telling me to do this thing?

Do I really have to do it? Could I delegate it? Can I get rid of it? What's the worst thing that happened could happen if I don't do it. So have a go at that, and do a stress in a stress inventory. one thing in terms of sort of some visualizations sort of techniques that I quite like are if you start spiraling in terms of stress is having a word or an image that will help you stop and take a breath.

so I have like literally stop, you know, if I really feel myself sparring, like say to yourself, stop, I imagine putting my hand up. I might put my hand up, stop, stop, take a breath. At that point, I would get up, move away from whatever's stressing you. Take a walk outside, do something to distract the chimp, take a walk in nature, ideally, so stop, or often I think about just clearing my desk.

I think about taking my arm and sweeping all the papers off my desk, just like sweeping them off, take a breath. Usually I'd have to go away from the computer, if that's what's stressing me out, and then come back and feel calmer. And then one step further, is write what's stressing you out on a piece of paper, and then screw it up.

rip it up. Jump up and down on it. And, just get rid of it, let it go. and I used to do this with my team. If someone was particularly upset about something that had happened with someone, or they'd had a lot of criticism from a client, this is exactly what we do. So it sounds a bit extreme, but you'd be amazed how doing this really helps you.

If you can't let go of something, do this physical thing. and it may really help. And then a big thing, I think a big thing that we all do is we all start thinking about every single thing that we need to do. And it's this great mountain of to dos, there's this enormous project, how are we ever going to get to the end of it?

It's a bit, again, the chimp thing. Catastrophizing. I, there's no way. I mean, how am I ever going to get this done in three weeks? There is no way. There is so much to do. So what you need to do is come back and just say one step at a time. so one step at a time, I'm not going to look up at the mountain.

I'm not going to look at the peak of the mountain. I'm just going to look at the step in front of me. I'm going to take that step. And then when I've done that step, I'm going to think about taking another step. And I find this incredibly, incredibly helpful. So one step at a time. And don't look at the enormous mountain of to do lists, in front of you.

So, so I think that's a key thing that I'd really like to stress. Just think about it. And, and with that, I, I talk about, these stress tips. I'm going to put them, I'm going to give you a link to them so you can go and look at them all written down. a link to my website. but one of the other things I talk about is maybe creating a mantra.

So I quite like the mantra one step at a time. you might have, I can only do what I can do today. I find that really helpful. I can only do what I can do today. It's absolutely true. I can't do things. I can't, I can't be superhuman. I can only do what I can do today. And I need to look after myself. I need to have some boundaries in place.

I need to stop and rest because otherwise, if I don't, I'm not going to be able to perform tomorrow. And I like to think of the, oxygen coming down from the plane. So I have to put my oxygen mask on first before I go and help anyone else, because I've got to maintain myself in a good condition. So you need boundaries.

One step at a time. there are some things you can do again, in terms of irritants, like, making sure that you focus. So when you're doing your one step at a time, maybe give yourself 15 minutes, 15 minutes, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to focus on this. I'm going to turn off all notifications on my phones and on my computer, and I'm going to focus on this.

I'm going to go to a room where no one can disturb me, where I haven't got distractions around me, and I'm just going to focus. So that can be really helpful because then. You will have done that one step. And when you've done that one step, take a breath and say, well done. Well done. We've done that. We've done the one step.

Now I'm going to, I'm going to take the next step and your brain will go, but what about all the other ones? And then it's like, stop, stop it. We're just going to do this next step.what else? And I, I've talked about like, not trying to control things you can't control, but sometimes again, in terms of these small stresses, doing something that you can control can also be really helpful and helpful in terms of taking a break.

So little things like going and doing tidying up. So if you've got a cupboard, that's really. Messy. Maybe you have a go at going and tidying up, something, some small task that you can do that has an end point and will make you feel better. It could be something like doing a puzzle if you like doing Sudoku or things like that, but something that is within your control that you can complete and That is likely to make you feel better.

So it feels a bit counterintuitive because you haven't got enough time to get everything done, but it's going to make you feel better. And I find like tidying up my desk, you know, my desk is absolutely reflects my state of mind. When I start to get papers all over the place, it's all in a mess. I don't know where anything is.

It's definitely reflecting what's going in my mind. So, so coming back and, and tidying my desk can be really helpful, but think about, can you do something That is, is, is going to be within your control and give you a sense of achievement.and then there are some things that I talked about in terms of the basics.

So exercise is incredibly, incredibly helpful. That became one of my, boundaries, my non negotiables when I'd been off with stress. So I had to go to the gym two or three times a week. I put it in my diary. It was, I told my PA to keep it as if it was a meeting with a client. so I had to go, you know, sometimes I couldn't, you know, sometimes I'd have to let it go, but generally it was a non negotiable.

I would have to, I would have to do it. And I try and have a non negotiable nowadays, which is if it gets to nine o'clock and I'm still on my laptop, I have to turn it off because I know from experimenting with myself, if I keep doing emails till 11 o'clock, then I don't sleep. So I know that now. And it's as hard as it is, as nice as it would be to say, Oh, I'll just carry on and I'll be in a really good place.

position for tomorrow. I know that's now a non negotiable. I've got to, I've got to stop. But getting outside and exercising is, will be amazing for you. And exercise doesn't have to be doing some crazy bootcamp thing in the gym. It can be as simple as walking and walking is amazing because there's this meditative rhythmic quality to walking.

So it does all sorts of things in terms of reducing cortisol, inflammation, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, releases all sorts of helpful chemicals into our system, like endorphins and dopamine, improving our mood. So it's really anything you can do to do some level of exercise will be really helpful in terms of reducing stress.

And building resilience. And then I've mentioned a couple of times in passing about nature, like getting out in nature. So if you can go into an amazing forest on a walk or amazing park, if you're in an urban environment, just do it. When you're walking, spend some time, just look at the trees, look up at the sky, look at the leaves on the trees, look at the grass that you can see, and maybe think about bringing nature into your house.

Can you bring plants into your house? Can you bring essential oils into your house? and in New Zealand, they now even, have the concept of doctors giving a green prescription. So they'll give patients, not just for mental health issues or stress, but for all sorts of things, they'll give them a green prescription, which is spending two hours in nature, three times a week, because they found it helps people so much and, and water in particular is really helpful.

So anytime you can spend near water will be particularly restful and restorative.and I've talked about breathing. so we spend a lot of our time just breathing shallowly, particularly when we concentrate. there's now a concept of email apnea, i. e. holding our breaths when we're reading our email.

So have a look. See, do you do that when an email comes in or when you're drafting? Are you holding your breath? And what we really need to do, a bit like we did at the beginning of the session, is stop and take a few deep breaths. Deep breaths. And, again, I'll put a link to some breathing exercises, at the bottom of the podcast, but just every now and again, every hour or two, take a really deep.

Inhale and then just let it all go. Maybe do two or three. You're replenishing your system with oxygen, but you're really, you're really activating the parasympathetic nervous system. and there are different breathing exercises you can do. you can, if you want to really reduce stress, Try and inhale and then do a longer exhale.

So maybe inhale for four, you can wait a couple of minutes, a couple of seconds, not minutes, and then breathe out for six. So try something along that there's, there's another concept called a physiological sigh, which sort of, I think, mimics what happens if you've really been sobbing, if you've really been crying, it's like you take an inhale and then another short, sharp inhale, then exhale.

So it's something like. Like that, and then exhale. So it's sort of, if you've ever really cried a lot, it's sort of what's happened when you take two, two inhales, you know, quickly after one another. And again, I've got a link to a video, so you can watch someone demonstrating that technique. But just stopping and breathing, even if you're just breathing a bit more deeply, trying to get into the bottom of your lungs, opening up your chest, shoulders down, will be incredibly good for you.

And then crying as well. Like crying isn't bad. Crying is a great, great stress reliever. As anyone knows who's ever got really stressed and then cried, you feel this, have a good cry is it. We say it for a reason. It will absolutely make you feel better. And they've done research to look at the different chemical makeup of like tears for when you've got something in your eyes.

So there are some tears coming out and then emotional tears when you're really crying and actually Emotional tears are full of stress hormones. So you are literally crying out your stress. and, and, you know, there are crying clubs in Japan, of course. so you can go and actually have a good cry.

Maybe go to the laughter club as well. but yeah, crying, don't think of crying as a bad thing. Crying is a great stress reliever.and then what else? So in terms of building resilience, so a bit of stress applied every now and again. Yeah. can be really helpful in terms of building resilience. And again, you'll all have heard about cold water and the fact that this can be great for our mood.

So, exposure to cold water, either cold water swimming and cold shower, anything Wim Hof talks about. can actually be really good. It's called hormetic stress. It's sort of like you're inoculating yourself to stress. So a little bit of stress helps you build resilience and react more positively when other stress comes along.

And actually it's been shown it doesn't have to be the same sort of stress. So it doesn't just mean you're going to be good at reacting to cold water. You're actually going to be good at dealing with other types of stress, hypoxic breathing. So again, that's a, that's something you can find Wim Hof.

demonstrating soreness, actually put you under a level of thermal stress. So they can be regular soreness are really good for you. and, and if you think about some yoga poses, what's going on is you're putting yourself in a, in a stressful situation. So you might be balancing, or you might be trying to do some form of splits or something that you find really difficult.

But you're having to keep your breathing regular and keep your brain calm. So you're teaching your brain to stay calm in a stressful situation. And, and one of the ways they, one of the experiments, again, I'm afraid this isn't nice for animals, but they, they, they worked out. That in terms of hormetic stress, that if they heated up worms, poor little worms, if they heated them up a bit, then, they became , then basically their cell cleanup process became much more active.

So they were rejuvenating effectively a bit of. a bit of heat, but obviously too much heat. And then it was just too much. It wasn't good for them. so last few things, I've got more things that, will be, in my notes, but I think the last couple of things I want to talk about are, firstly, like embrace failure, like, you know, we always learn most from our mistakes.

but a lot of the time we're really scared of failing and making a mistake. If you look at the tech industry, they've really embraced failure. They have this concept of fail fast. So come up with an innovation, try it out, throw it away. If it doesn't work, don't hold onto it. and I think a lot of us, you know, I'm a lawyer.

I think You know, we feel like everything has to be as good as it possibly can. If not, be not, if not perfect. And certainly we don't create something to then decide we're just going to throw it away because it's not good enough. but embrace failure. You will, you learn so much from it. It, you know, take a risk.

have a listen to Elizabeth Day's podcast, how to fail and listen to all the amazing people talk about. where they've gone through failures and difficult times in their lives and it's made them stronger. So, so not being so scared of failure, again, will reduce the pressure and reduce the stress that we're under.

And then another amazing sort of prescription for, For stress, like getting out in nature is gratitude. So gratitude has been shown to be a great practice, to undertake for mood, but also for stress. and one little exercise that, I like to suggest to people is maybe, I mean, write a great long list of everything you're grateful for and add to it.

And again, you write it down, go back to it. You'll be really surprised at some of the things that you've written down and they can be really tiny things, things that give you a spark of joy. Those little things that you've bought something and it makes you feel really good, or someone said something nice and it made you feel good, write them down and be grateful for them.

But one thing you can do is, think about one thing that you're grateful for that day. One thing you'd give yourself credit for. I used to say one thing you've done well, and my family found that difficult because they kept saying I didn't do anything well today. But so one thing you give yourself credit for, and then one thing you're really looking forward to tomorrow.

And even if you're in a really, really bad state, you can say, okay, so the one thing I'm grateful for today is that it's over. The one thing I give myself credit for is I got through it and the thing I'm looking forward to tomorrow is going to bed at the end of the day. So you can do this no matter how low your mood, but have a go, just a bit of gratitude.

And then we've all heard about random acts of kindness, doing things that, are kind for other people, even tiny little things where you give someone your seat or you let them pass in the street or buy someone a cup of coffee who you don't know. they light up your reward centers. So you're doing something to help someone else, but actually you're getting just as much benefit.

yourself. So, I think that is probably, enough. Well, actually, one last thing, is, if you're, if you're really worried, really anxious, really concerned, you know, really stressed, maybe say to yourself, What actually, if everything's going to be all right, what if it's all fine, maybe it's all going to be fine.

And that this comes from someone called Mel Robbins, a podcaster and psychotherapist. Have a look at her podcast. She's got lots of great stuff on it, particularly, about anxiety. and she's great fun. but saying to yourself, look, what if it all works out, maybe everything. is going to be fine. And then anything you can do to make sure you put yourself, that you give yourself some deep rest.

So proper sleep going into deep sleep, but also activities where you are in some sort of flow. So when you see Tom Daley knitting at the Olympics, that's what he's doing. He's in what we call a flow state. So he's engaged. He's sort of, he's in this deep restful state because he's doing something That he's not really having to think about, that is putting him into this state.

A bit like sometimes when you're driving and you've got somewhere you don't, you don't know how you got there. That's flow, but people get it from colouring in, from doing something that you really, really enjoy doing, but you want to find ways to deeply relax. And as sad as it is, I'm afraid me sitting in front of Married at First Light with a glass of wine isn't.

It's relaxing, but it's not deep. Restorative rest, and I'd encourage everyone if they can. I haven't talked about this earlier to think about. Can you build some form of meditation into your life? So I've been doing yoga for years. I'm qualified yoga teacher. I still at the moment. Don't have a really regular meditation practice.

I'm working on it again. I was great during lockdown. there is so much evidence that it really helps with stress, but helps in so many, many ways. And it doesn't have to be for a long time a day. You can do it for 10 minutes. Just do it as an experiment. See for a month. Can you do five, 10 minutes a day?

Start with two minutes and nothing magic about meditation. Just sit down somewhere comfortable. You don't have to be in the lotus position, but ideally somewhere where your back's upright, not lying down. Cause then you might go to sleep, sit up, you know, relax. Have your chest up and then just start breathing.

And again, there are some, there's a breathing app that I'll put a link to in the podcast that you can breathe along to, to begin with. And all you're trying to do is, is focus on something like, can you feel the breath going in and out of your nostrils? If you want to, you can use a mantra. So you can breathe in saying let, you can breathe out saying go.

I like saying I breathe, therefore I am. But you don't there is no magic to it and you don't have to not think of anything thoughts will come in So don't try and push them away. Just think of them as clouds something comes in Oh, do I need to buy some cheese for dinner tonight and then just let it float away like a cloud So just sit really relax and just breathe Give it a go and it may really help.

So so as I say these all the tips I've talked about are more we'll be in a link, on the podcast. So let's take one more deep breath in. And relax out. And thank you so much for listening today. I hope some of this, helps you and I really look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you.

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