"Joe's advice gave me the courage to take back my life, challenge my fear of imperfection, and realize that guilt is a choice. Thank you, Joe!"
Stress isn't caused by what we think, an external event, deadline, or comment. It's caused by the story we tell ourself about the stressful event. It's our reaction to the event that makes it stressful. That's a good thing, since it means we have the power to change that reaction and the story fueling it and stop the stress response in its tracks.
The stress response can go off within .02 one-hundredths of a second. It's so fast we have to either be able to catch ourselves quickly once it goes off, or be calm enough on the front end, so that we don't trigger it in the first place. I show you how to use both of these approaches to stop stress.
Stress is an emotional reaction that hijacks the modern mind and hands over control to an ancient part of the brain that unleashes raw, irrational emotions and thinks the year is 100,000 B.C. When something overloads your perceived ability to handle it, the ancient brain turns on the stress response and rash, impulsive, worst-case-scenario thinking.
If you don't contest the false beliefs of stress and resolve the problem fueling them, it can turn into chronic stress and then over time into burnout, which strips away all your coping resources — physical, mental, and emotional. That can lead to serious health consequences, including stroke and depression.
Fortunately, the thoughts of stress are not real. They are false beliefs that can be sent packing. In my stress management coaching, you learn how to manage the thoughts that fuel the stress-burnout cycle with strategies that put you in control of demands.
You get stress management strategies to:
Mark Twain said, "Drag your thoughts away from your troubles by any way you can — by the ears, by the hands, or any other way you can manage it." He knew what the science knows, that the mind has a mind of its own.
Managing stress is about managing the thoughts set off by emotional reactions — fears, anxieties, anger, resentment. We tend to grab any thought that's in the brain. Since it's in our head, we figure it must be true. But it's not. Just because something is in our head doesn't make it true.
If we engage with the false beliefs of stress, we wind up ruminating about them over and over until we believe them. That rumination is what causes stress. We have to be able recognize the false beliefs and not engage with them.
Here are some articles of mine that explain how the stress process happens:
"How to Turn Off Stress Instantly and Be as Smart as Your Dog"
"Control the Hidden Engine of Stress and Burnout: Rumination"
"Work Stress Increases Risk of Heart Attack Even in Your Twenties"
The goal with stress management isn't just to switch off the reflex equipment driving stress. It's to build coping resources and resilience so we can manage whatever comes at us.
The engine of resilience is something key to bouncing back in a world of challenges and one of the most important things we can know. It's called explanatory style, how we explain why bad things happen to us. A pessimistic style will take a setback as permanent and personal, boxing us in to negative rumination.
Optimistic explanatory style views the situation as temporary and non-personal, allowing us to bounce back quickly. You will learn in my coaching sessions how to respond to events with an optimistic frame, even if you are pessimist by nature, and manage any challenge. See my article, "Bounce Back from Anything with the Resilience of Life's Silver Lining."
The science of optimism has powerful tools that we can use against the catastrophic thoughts set off by the stress response. Even the language we use — this always happens to me, I'll never make it — trap us in the bunker of pessimistic explanatory style.
If you are in a high-stress environment at work or elsewhere, stress management coaching can help (I also offer burnout recovery coaching). I work with you in one-hour consultations via phone or Zoom webinar. You get strategies to reframe stress and manage demands and reflex reactions.
Coaching is very effective at beating work stress and burnout. And very fast. In a few sessions, clients are able to overcome long-running challenges that some tell me they have struggled with for years. I've helped people around the country and from Paris to Perth get relief from stress and recover from burnout.
Make stress optional with one-on-one stress management coaching. Click on the button below to set up a free introductory consultation or connect with me at joe@worktolive.info or 310-570-6987. Look forward to speaking with you.
