Whether you’re aiming for progress over perfection or learning to say “no,” this episode is packed with relatable insights, inspiration, and encouragement to help you face stress head-on—and come out stronger.

This is a topic that touches all of us: stress. As women, we juggle countless demands—from our careers and caregiving roles to the pressure to be everything to everyone. I know firsthand what it’s like to navigate 60-hour work weeks during tax season, all while trying to keep everything else afloat. In this episode, I share some light-hearted moments, as well as practical strategies that have helped me manage the inevitable stress that comes my way.

I’ll talk about the importance of pinpointing your core stressors, setting healthy boundaries, and breaking big tasks into smaller, manageable pieces. I’ll also look at how reframing negative self-talk and choosing progress over perfection can make a world of difference.

More than anything, I want to encourage you—stress isn’t something we can avoid, but it is something we can learn to navigate and even use as a catalyst for growth. Let’s tackle stress together, so we can show up as our best selves for ourselves and those we care about.

Here are my 3 key takeaways:

• Identify Your Core Stressors: Whether it’s caregiving, perfectionism, or overcommitment, recognizing what triggers your stress is the first essential step to managing it effectively.
• Progress Over Perfection: Betty reminds us that striving for perfection often causes more harm than good; making progress—even if it isn’t perfect—is what really matters.
• Set Boundaries & Prioritize: Audit your commitments, block time for yourself in permanent ink, and don’t be afraid to graciously say "no." Protecting your priorities is critical for your well-being.

Moments

00:00 Managing Stress During CPA Peak Season

04:53 Empowered by Modern Female Role Models

07:40 Managing Difficult Client Encounters

10:05 Efficient Email Management Strategies

13:27 Regular Reflection and Reevaluation

19:23 Perfectionism Causes Self-Induced Stress

20:49 Perfect Yet Stressful Celebration

25:20 Perfectionism's Costly Consequences

28:45 Regularly Reflect and Adjust Commitments

30:11 Challenge Assumptions, Seek Reality

33:58 "Confronting Unavoidable Stress"

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This is THE podcast that advances women toward economic, social, and political achievement.

Hosted by Betty Collins, CPA, and Director at Brady Ware and Company. Betty also serves as the Committee Chair for Empowering Women, and Director of the Brady Ware Women’s Initiative.

Each episode is presented by Brady Ware and Company, committed to empowering women to go their distance in the workplace and at home.

For more information, Brady Ware and Company.

Remember to follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.  And forward our podcast along to other Inspiring Women in your life.

Brady Ware and Company

Welcome to another episode of Inspiring Women, the podcast that celebrates the stories of extraordinary women from all walks of life. I am your host, Betty Collins. Join us for an inspiring conversation that will leave you ready to take on the world. So stress, not if, but when. Sound familiar to you? Does that sound like a phrase you don't want to hear? Today I'm going to talk a little bit about stress and what we put ourselves through. Because stress, stress, at this point, I think we find people who are like, oh, I just don't want to be having any stress. I'm just going to go on vacation for. And then my stress will be gone.

Vacation's two weeks out of the year, okay? There's 52 weeks in the year. So you got to figure out in those 50 weeks, you know, because in my life, for instance, it's really important what I do as a CPA from February 1 to April 15, right? It's a huge time. It's a huge time that CPAs are known for because of tax and year end and banking needs and all the things that we do. So we have always been a focus on that time period. But in order to get through 60 hour weeks, tons of work that you cannot even comprehend getting done because it all comes at once and you're tired and it's winter in Ohio and gray, you're just getting through that 12 week period. And unfortunately, we don't talk about then what are we doing from May 1 to December 1, because we need to talk about when we don't have the stress maybe, or when we're smoothly sailing, what do we do with that time so that when the boat starts rocking, we can get through it. So stress is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And most people really relate to it in the terms of, yeah, that phrase makes sense to me.

But here's some good humor one liners that I liked when I of course used my AI technology, right? I tried yoga to relieve stress. Now I'm stressed and I'm stuck in a pretzel. That sound familiar? Here's one that women can relate to. I have 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made up in my head. Okay, here's some good ones. I'm not stressed. I'm just, you know, aggressively overthinking everything. Or how about this one? Stress is when you wake up screaming and realize you haven't fallen asleep yet, right? And last but not least, and I love this one, I don't need a stress ball.

I need a stress Bat. Okay, so how do we deal with stress? How do we deal with it? Because remember, it's not if, it's when. So core stressors, these are things that in order to know stress and deal with stress and head on with stress, you got to know what, what causes it, right. What triggers it, what are those things that come to you? And for women, these are kind of the top ones. First of all, caregiving. Right now we have kids at home that should be on their own and parents at home. And then you are the middle one because you're the daughter of the parents, right? And you are the mother of the kids and the grandkids and they call it sandwich housing. But there is a lot of care today and stuff that has to be taken care of.

And it's generational sometimes that care, it's a big one for women. Secondly, guilt and burnout, the pressure to do it all be all can lead to a lot of stress and emotional exhaustion. And women are very guilty. I think we all are. We live in those worlds. There are people who I love watching the Facebook reels where they're minimalists living in the woods, literally building a tent out of tree branches in the cold winter, lighting fire and thinking I'm now in the woods with no stress. Look what it took to get through the woods. And look what it took right for building it.

So we tend to get burnout because we might burn out just to get stress free. Right. It's kind of crazy self doubt when we. Despite qualifications and our achievement, many women feel they don't deserve their success, which is just ludicrous. Or they don't even see themselves as successful. And so they're comparing themselves to other. Comparison is a huge stressor. It's a huge trigger.

Then you have the fear of anxiety, of course, high expectations, perfectionism, fear of that failure, isolation. A lot of times, you know, in my industry back in the 80s and even 90s, I was one of the few women in accounting. Now it's over 50, 60% of women are accountants, but only 21% of them are in leadership. So we still tend to feel isolated. When I used to go to retreat, I was one of the few women around the table for Brady Wear. Not a bad thing. Great group of men. But I didn't have, you know, that role model.

I was kind of over here, maybe to the side. They were always gracious to me, don't get me wrong. But I would have loved to have had a really strong woman that could just say hey, hey, hey, stop. Or you're doing fine or whatever it was, I might have relieved a lot of stress in my life. Or those core things that get you stressed. And then, you know, there are limited role models, but not so much today. I have so many role models in my life, and I live, you know, in a time we all do 2025, where there's a lot of good women who have been successful and they're helping other women be successful. So I don't have the same excuse to be stressed out because I'm isolated or I don't have mentors.

They're everywhere. And if you ask and you're looking for it, you'll find it. And when we don't manage stress, there's a lot of effects, certainly health anxiety, depressions, you know, mood swings. All of a sudden you're melting down. That would be my life. You have some, maybe some concentration issues. You can't focus on what's important. Burnout, for sure.

Headaches and migraines, sleep. I mean, look what people take for sleep today. And a lot of that. And then you have heart issues or whatever. The stress is something that puts you in the grave a lot earlier if you don't address it and figure out not how to be stress free, but how do you navigate through it? So you have to, in order to deal with stress, you got to get to what are those stressors? And then realize these things are maybe really taken me down. Right. What do I do with it? So what I want to talk about is. And I loved a person in my life long time ago.

I went to a class in the 1990s, okay. And I went to this class and this woman, Rebecca Lee, she was a great speaker, and she just taught on general accounting things, you know, at very. I mean, I was a staff person to senior, maybe, maybe manager in those timeframes. And I always would go back to her classes. We didn't do them virtual. We didn't do them online. It was, you went to a hotel and you spent the day with a bunch of accountants. But she really taught me something about when I went into management, and she said, you got to prepare for the chaos, which causes the stress.

Just plan for it. You got to plan for it. You got to be realizing it's, you know, February 1st to April 15th. You can't plan enough in those ways to not have stress. But you can plan to navigate through the stress. So sometimes in order to do that, I think you have to visualize success. Okay. I look at my calendar two weeks out, and there are times I go, holy moly, how am I going to get through these weeks? So I visualize, what would I like that week to look like? Well, you know what, I don't need to go to bank to lunch with one more banker.

I'm just going to take that off my list and say, you know what? It's not a good time for me to do this. I have a client that's really, really not easy and I just as soon avoid them. But they're on my calendar. So I got to picture a success. How am I going to get through that meeting? And most of the time for me, when it's hard people to deal with, this is what I think through. I'm going to first figure out what is the wind in the sail that I'm going to take. Because when you take someone's wind out of their sail, the stress levels come down tremendously. So I'm going to go in and I'm going to be pretty good.

I'm just going to go in from the get go and I'm going to be ready again. Planning for the stress. Because it's not if, when. And then there is that whole thing as you prepare yourself more and you visualize more, you're preparing. It's kind of like you've built some mental muscle. Okay? And there's nothing like mental muscle, which I allude that to confidence. And then you get through it, it's over. The crucial conversation's done, everything's on the table.

Now what? And then you'll probably relieve yourself of a lot of stress by doing that. So visualize what you want that to look like next week and the week after and the month and your year. However, visualize the success that's preparing for stress. The other thing you do is you got to have some positive self talk. Please don't shut me off at this point because you're not a rah rah person. But this is temporary. You push through, you're in the mirror, you're looking at it going, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. I mean, I'm kind of talking about that, but my husband always tells me this is a hill you can climb.

There probably isn't a hill you can't climb. You just got to figure out the hill. He says that to me a lot. So you got to have those positive pumping up. He's my biggest fan. He's always giving me the what for. But it's very helpful in your planning for stress because remember, it's not if it's when. So plan ahead.

How do you do that? Sometimes you break really big tasks into a bunch of small ones. Email. Email makes me crazy. And I probably respond to 100 a day. If I respond to them at 10 at a time and then go focus and I work for 50 minutes and take 10 minutes at the rest, the end of the hour to go through emails and you'd get rid of the ones that are most current, the one that are causing you stress, the ones who screaming the loudest. Right. But you deal in email in sections instead of I got to clear this right now, I just got a notification. No you don't.

And people will wait for you. Not two weeks, but they'll wait. And so dealing with things in small sections sometimes is better than I've got a hundred emails, blah blah blah. And I bet you 40 of them I didn't have to respond to in five minutes. And probably though in those 40 they're two liners, right? So sometimes when you're doing small little breaks of things, take the 10 easiest emails to get off your list. Right. And when I go on vacation, one of the things I always do is I just want one screen only of emails left. And usually they are I gotta meet with somebody or they're not client related, but I try to get that screen to look, look, I've got six things.

Yay. You have to remove the chaos and the barriers. So I run a division in our company called CAS Client Advisory Services. And it never fails that we seem to always be in stress. We're in chaos. And part of it is because the meeting starting at 9:30 and by 10T10 we're finally having the right conversation in a room with no heat or a room that's way too hot because we didn't reserve a room and nobody and then people wanted to go get coffee and then there was total chaos and it just drives me crazy. So after the last time I said, this is it, I cannot do this. I said, you know what we're going to do? I don't want anyone coming late.

9:30 means 9:30 coffee. Bring it with you. If you can't wait an hour to go get another cup. Sorry. And I just kind of set some boundaries because it's up and down and then you get started, then you're on a time crunch and that kind of helped things. But I also took it to different levels and said, you know what, I want agendas because we're just in here. And then affirmation. Progress is better than perfection.

Put that in your mirror. Put that on your screensaver. Progress is better than perfection. At least I'm making progress. I'm heading in the right direction. We're gonna get there. It just might take some time. Overcoming perfectionism, overcoming commitment.

Recognize the signs. Identify your priorities. Go to your calendar and see what your and tell me your priorities. Here they are, the top three priorities in my life. Go to your calendar last week and did they reflect your time? Because your calendar is going to tell my 80% of my calendar. When I say, these are my priorities. What did I do? And you'll see it, because most of us have electronic calendars. You'll see it.

What did I spend my time doing? Was it my priorities? Because if it isn't, then they're not your priorities. Your priorities are what you're spending your time on. So if those don't match each other, you probably have an issue with over commitment. Review of your calendar is really good. What could have happened? What didn't happen? And then change your calendar in the future so that it can be, this is going to happen, not it didn't happen. And then always audit the commitments you've made. Is that really what I should be doing? Is that really the right thing I should be putting my time into? Because over commitment is not. It will cause you stress again.

Not if, when. So then reframe your thinking gracefully. Say, no, thank you. It's okay. Block time for you in permanent ink. And those are boundaries. And you know, once people know those are boundaries and. And you're not going to budge on it, they're not going to ask you again.

And then reflect regularly. Look back and go, okay, is this how I wanted my week to go? Is the next two weeks really how I want them to go? And why am I still doing this? And I've had times where I've gone through that, and I'll go, you know what? I'm committed to too many things, and this one is off the radar now because I just can't. And then you have those hard conversations with whoever it is or whatever it is, and you say in 10 minutes you can say, I'm not doing that anymore. And here's the reasons why you're done. Take off the routine weekly networking meeting that you're not getting any business from. Take off the things of I've got to meet a banker every morning for breakfast. Why? Or whatever it is. Reflect on it, look at it, and then do something about it sometimes.

Because when we're recognizing those. Those things of self talk, negative self Talk. You have to look at the voice in your head who's saying it's right. Who is that voice in your head? And are you looking at it like you should? What is the language that I'm using? So I. I've gone to a shrink off and on my whole life. I haven't been to one in a while. I'll have to admit, I must be doing okay. But she was only 27.

I think I was 40. And she was doing her intern kind of thing, and so we just connected. She was from Russia. I'm from central Ohio. She was younger. I wasn't. She wasn't married. I was.

And. And, man, did she impact my life. It was amazing. And the one thing she would say to me is, I would start rambling on. Well, he does this, and he said that, And. And then he thinks this. And she goes, okay, first of all, did he say that? Is this real or are these assumptions in your head? No one ever said that to me. I went, well, yeah.

She goes, is it real or is this assumptions? To this day, 20 years later, I still. When I get those conversations in my head going, I'm like, wait, am I making assumptions or is this real? And about half of your issues go away. Because a lot of times we're making an assumption, and we're building on the assumption, right? So you got to challenge the voice. You got to challenge the topic and the language and start identifying. Here I go, betty, you're going down this rabbit hole of he thinks. No, does he think that? Is that a real thought, or am I assuming that? And then you gotta really kind of reframe the self talk. You know, you have to sit and go, I always mess up. Or, no, you know, I'm learning.

I'm growing. I just got an MDA or an MBA in life, and I'm gonna take this experience and I'm gonna build on it. And so the negative talk can become positive. You also can be very delusional by going, oh, that's not real. Oh, that doesn't matter. Right? So it's not a matter of if, and it's not a matter when it comes to stress. It's a matter of when. And one of the things that I loved in the Julia Roberts movie, she's in Rome.

Her whole goal is to eat and have an appetite again. Wouldn't that be awesome? To go, like, four months and eat Italian food? That's real and amazing. So she's there, and. But she realizes she's. So she's in the middle of the Roman Colosseum, you know, and back in the day, that was the place, that was the social point of Rome. And now it's ruins. Okay. Now it's really for the homeless.

It's for animals that hide there. It's for. But people still take tours and they go through it to see it, to get some kind of glimpse of it. And what she realized as she was sitting in things that are just in ruins. Ruins are the road to restoration. Because the only thing that happens now at the Coliseum is that it could be transformed. It's already at its lowest point. It's already back here.

It's had all the stresses of life on it and it shows. So the only thing you can choose to do is sit there and enjoy the ruins and reflect or you can transform the Coliseum. And she talks about that. She goes, I guess and she goes, you know, and transformation is a continual process. And so when I look at everything, when it comes to stress and I look at not if, but when and when I look at the things that I could be avoiding dealing with. Stress is a continual transformation of how you think and, and identifying things and how you can navigate through it differently. And so that, so you have a choice. You can choose to go, I'm going to deal with my stress, I'm going to hide from my stress.

I'm going to ignore stress, I'm going to pretend it's not there. I'm going to just wait till I melt down and have a heart attack. Or you can choose to navigate through it and transform how you deal with it, or you can just keep doing the same thing you've always done. And when you do that, you'll have the same results. So stress today is one of those things you're not going to get away from. And we live in a culture that is becoming, it seems like ever, ever ending in stress. It's not just turn off your social media, although that's a good idea. It really is a lot more than that.

So I would challenge you today, deal with your stress. It's not if, it's when. I'm Betty Collins. I'm so glad that you joined us today and I hope that you found this encouraging. And her point was she chose stress that was self induced. Cancer is not self induced. Right. Car wrecks that you didn't, you know, someone hit you and t boned you and you're going through a year of therapy.

That's not stress you caused, but self induced stress is the one that is really the most common and it's 80%. There's that 20% that unfortunately had a bad situation. But the number one as I searched was perfectionism. That is the biggest self induced stress we can put in our lives. Everything has to be perfect. My daughter is a classic example of perfection. She now has a one and a half year old and she's learned that the house is going to be a mess and not all the dishes are going to get done right away and laundry is going to stay stacked and you're going to be tired at night and you're not going to sleep from 11 to 7 every day like you used to. But she had a party for her little son.

He's a doll, Cooper, and he turned one last February. And she wanted to have the party, the perfect party. And she wanted her, you know, my husband and I there. She wanted her dad and her stepmom. She wanted his parents, grandparents, closest friends, you name it. So, and the long story short is we had 26 people in my house, fully decorated, the entire downstairs looking like the jungle with animals and flags and you name it, pictures everywhere. It took us in the entire day to decorate, do food and all of it. And you know, she said I didn't really enjoy it because it's kind of like a wedding, right? And so.

But she wanted everything perfect because this was. Cooper will never remember that, okay. What he loved and the best part of the whole day was the simplest thing. Give the kid a cake and let him just eat it. That was the highlight of the whole party. But she wanted this. Of course, she learned it from me because I've done those things all my life where everything has to be decorated, food has to be a certain way, and we had to have every, you know, you can't just have five people, you got to have 10. But she didn't enjoy her moment and she put herself through stress and put her husband through stress.

At the end of the day, they were thrilled. They did the party and everyone loved it. But she didn't enjoy the time other than other. The second thing that is the biggest, biggest self induced stress. You know, that life we create right over commitment. I'm guilty. You look at my calendar from the last four months, 80% of my calendar is full. That's ridiculous.

It really should be no more than 60% over. Commitment kills us all. I mean, you talk to parents today? Well, he's in this sport and she's in that sport. And he's doing this and she's doing dance and, and every night of the week is taken till 9 o'. Clock. So we just go through a drive through, everyone's exhausted. And then when that season's over, we go to the next season. Now we're playing football and then she's in volleyball and school is back in play and we over commit and we've taught our kids to over commit themselves.

And so we need to say saying yes to too many things or taking on more than you can manage at work and or home. And then you're guilty when you don't meet everyone's expectations. Then you feel bad and burned out when your boundaries just keep getting run over. So I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you get rid of over commitment. We live in a time where over commitment is the thing. I guess what I would tell you is learn from those you see that don't over commit. And they know how to set boundaries and know and there's not a lot of them.

There's. I would say there's two of those type of people to every 10. But they are there. And there are people who are very good at that. We're so afraid of missing the moment, missing the new client, missing the activity, missing the kids things miss, I'm not there. Oh my goodness. When in reality we're missing it because we're too tired to enjoy it. My son just went to Disney with his children.

You could be there for a month to get and see everything from every park. And what was so funny was his little son, six years old, Jude. He was my first grandson. And by Sunday at day four, he says to his dad, I'm just ready to go home. Can we go back to Yuriksville? That's where he lives. And they were like, well, we're at Disney. We're at Disney. And he's like, okay, I'm tired.

He's six years old right now. Silas was the second son. He could have gone 247 at Disney, but he's that kid, right? So. But even one night, the night before they were getting ready to leave, my daughter in law and her mom went to the parks to see the fireworks. And my son said that was the best night in the terms of I'm there with just the boys in our room. They're tired, they're laying there and we're just talking about the good times of the week, looking at pictures and laughing. And they were as content, if not more in that scenario. But we tend to over commit.

Disney is 24 7. It's craziness. And then the other thing of the number one self induced is this negative self talk. I'm just not good enough. I just can't do it. Oh, woe is me. And then you tend to get paralyzed or do nothing. So those are the three top the perfection, the over commitment and just negativity.

How do you overcome perfection? Well, you have to recognize the signs of perfection. You know, you have to recognize it. I mean there's a saying I love. We can't be perfect or we'll lose the good. Something of that nature or perfection takes over. What is good? Good is enough sometimes perfection is never probably there. So you have to constantly look at am I being perfectionist? And what is that trigger? How are the signs? And probably it's because you're constantly self criticizing yourself because you didn't do enough. It's the fear of failure, it's making mistakes.

And then you're going, okay, so recognize those signs. Why am I failing? Why am I fear? Why do I live in this? And probably there's probably related to perfectionism, procrastination due to high standards. So we tend to go, these are my standards. I can only do this. I had someone who brought in six years of tax returns because they didn't. They wanted their books and everything to be perfect for the tax returns. Meanwhile, they got six years. So we filed them all, we got them in and they missed out on thousands of dollars of refunds because of the statute of limitations, because they just couldn't get past.

And I'm talking $10 issues and $100 here and there. In the scope of things, they lost thousands of dollars for hundreds of dollars. That's perfection gone bad, right? So you have to look for that. And then procrastinating, it's now, now I'm in four years of not filing taxes. Now I'm in six years. And then all of a sudden you have this aha moment. I got to get this done, I've got to get it done now. And this is crazy.

And then you do it and you put yourself through something that could have been avoided. How else do you recognize sign? Probably you have difficulty delegating tasks. I mean I know somebody who's in a leadership position 24 7. She never stops because she's the only person that can do it and she has to sign off on it and she has to be a part of it. And then things just don't get done. There are things that just you never get to. So overcoming perfectionism, you got to recognize the signs and then you got to rethink how am I going to rethink? Replace. I must do this perfectly with, I'm doing my best.

You're going to get what you get. Understand the mistakes that are part of growth and don't reflect on your inequitacy, inaccuracy. Did I say that? And then affirmation. Progress is better than perfection. Put that in your mirror. Put that on your screensaver. Progress is better than perfection. At least I'm making progress.

I'm heading in the right direction. We're going to get there. It just might take some time. Overcoming perfectionism, overcoming commitment. Recognize the signs, identify your priorities and go to your calendar and see what your and tell me your priorities. Here they are, the top three priorities in my life. Go to your calendar last week and did they reflect your time? Because your calendar is going to tell my 80% of my calendar when I say these are my priorities. What did I do? And you'll see it.

Because most of us have electronic calendars. You'll see it. What did I spend my time doing? Was it my priorities? Because if it isn't, then they're not your priorities. Your priorities are what you're spending your time on. So if those don't match each other, you probably have an issue with over commitment. Review of your calendar is really good. What could have happened? What didn't happen? And then change your calendar in the future so that it can be, this is going to happen, not it didn't happen. And then always audit the commitments you've made.

Is that really what I should be doing? Is that really the right thing I should be putting my, my time into? Because over commitment is not. It will cause you stress again. Not if, when. So then reframe your thinking gracefully. Say, no, thank you, it's okay. Block time for you in permanent ink. And those are boundaries. And you know, once people know those are boundaries and you're not going to budge on it, they're not going to ask you again.

And then reflect regularly, look back and go, okay, is this how I wanted my week to go? Is the next two weeks really how I want them to go? And why am I still doing this? And I've had times where I've gone through that and I'll go, you know what? I'm committed to too many things, and this one is off the radar now because I just can't. And then you have those hard conversations with whoever it is or whatever it is, and you say in 10 minutes you can say, I'm not doing that anymore. And here's the reasons why you're done. Take off the routine weekly networking meeting that you're not getting any business from. Take off the things of I've got to meet a banker every morning for breakfast. Why? Or whatever it is. Reflect on it, look at it, and then do something about it sometimes. Because when we're recognizing those.

Those things of self talk, negative self talk, you have to look at the voice in your head who's saying it, right? Who is that voice in your head? And are you looking at it like you should? What is the language that I'm using? So I. I've gone to a shrink off and on my whole life. I haven't been to one in a while. I'll have to admit, I must be doing okay. But she was only 27. I think I was 40. And she was doing her intern kind of thing. And so we just connected.

She was from Russia. I'm from central Ohio. She was younger. I wasn't. She wasn't married. I was. And, man, did she impact my life. It was amazing.

And the one thing she would say to me is, I would start rambling on. Well, he does this, and he said that, and. And then he thinks this. And she goes, okay, first of all, did he say that? Is this real, or are these assumptions in your head? No one ever said that to me. I went, well, yeah. She goes, is it real, or is this assumptions? To this day, 20 years later, I still. When I get those conversations in my head going, I'm like, wait, am I making assumptions, or is this real? And about half of your issues go away. Because a lot of times we're making an assumption, and we're building on the assumption, right? So you got to challenge the voice.

You got to challenge the topic and the language and start identifying. Here I go, betty, you're going down this rabbit hole of he thinks. No, does he think that? Is that a real thought, or am I assuming that? And then you got to really kind of reframe the self talk. You know, you have to sit and go, I always mess up. Or, no, you know, I'm learning. I'm growing. I just got an MDA or an MBA in life, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna take this experience, and I'm gonna build on it.

And so the negative talk can become positive. You also can be very delusional by going, oh, that's not real. Oh, that doesn't matter. Right? So it's not a matter of if, and it's not a matter when it comes to stress. It's a matter of when. And one of the things that I loved in the Julia Roberts movie, she's in Rome. She's. Her whole goal is to eat and have an appetite again.

Wouldn't that be awesome? To go like four months and eat Italian food? That's real and amazing. So she's there and. But she realizes she's. So she's in the middle of the Roman Coliseum. And back in the day, that was the place that was the social point of Rome. And now it's ruins. Now it's really for the homeless. It's for animals that hide there.

But people still take tours and they go through it to see it, to get some kind of glimpse of it. And what she realized as she was sitting in things that are just in ruins. Ruins are the road to restoration. Because the only thing that happens now at the Colosseum is that it could be transformed. It's already at its lowest point. It's already back here. It's had all the stresses of life on it and it shows. So the only thing you can choose to do is sit there and enjoy the ruins and reflect, or you can transform the Coliseum.

And she talks about that. She goes, I guess. And she goes, you know, and transformation is a continual process. And so when I look at everything, when it comes to stress, and I look at. Not if, but when and when I look at the things that I could be avoiding. Dealing with stress is a continual transformation of how you think and identifying things and how you're going to navigate through it differently. And so that. So you have a choice.

You can choose to go. I'm going to deal with my stress. I'm going to hide from my stress. I'm going to ignore icstress. I'm going to pretend it's not there. I'm going to just wait till I melt down and have a heart attack. Or you can choose to navigate through it and transform how you deal with it, or you can just keep doing the same thing you've always done. And when you do that, you'll have the same results.

So stress today is one of those things you're not going to get away from. And we live in a culture that is becoming, it seems like ever, ever ending in stress. It's not just turn off your social media, although that's a good idea. It really is a lot more than that. So I would challenge you today, deal with your stress. It's not if, it's when. I'm Betty Collins and I'm sorry. Glad that you joined us today, and I hope that you found this encouraging.

Thank you for joining us on Inspiring Women with Betty Collins. We hope today's episode has inspired you to chase your dreams and break through your barriers and embrace your own unique journey.