So, you are tired, stressed, anxious, and may even feel hopeless. You want to make the stress in your life disappear, but you know that’s not possible or realistic.
You know you can’t stop stress from entering into your life. The bills won’t stop coming in, there are never more than 24 hours in a day, and work and personal obligations will not stop demanding your attention.
Having said that, you may feel there is nothing you can do about stress, but the good news is you can. It’s not about breaking it off with stress completely like you would break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend. It is about you learning to manage and control it from impacting your life as much as it has been.
Stress manifests in us in different ways…so there is no one-size fits all model…but there are ways to handle it better.
In today’s Carolyn Talks, I discuss three quick tips to help manage your stress better.
Follow these three simple strategies and you will instantly become better at coping with the daily challenges and demands in your life.
For more tips on how to manage stress, check out our blog post, The Dark Side of Stress Management. You can also check out our Stress Management workshop, where you’ll learn about the role emotional intelligence plays in managing stress and build a stress prevention plan!
Video Transcript
Blooper: Dear stress, whatever, let’s break up. I’m not good at that.
Carolyn: Hey there, it’s Carolyn Stern, and welcome to Carolyn Talks, the channel to watch if you want to get unstuck, maximize your potential and achieve more.
Today we’re going to talk about stress. I don’t know how, but my crew here convinced me to play a game that’s probably going to make me look like an idiot. They’ve written out 10 emotions on these cards, I haven’t seen them, and I’m supposed to put them on my head and guess what it is. They’re going to describe it and I’m going to yell out the emotion. Here goes.
Speaker 2: All right, and go!
Speaker 3: It’s upside down, turn it up, turn it- there you go.
Speaker 2: Okay, you’re very like…
Speaker 3: Sure of yourself
Speaker 2: Yes.
Carolyn: Confident
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: This is what motivates people because they’re so-
Carolyn: Driven!
Speaker 3: They are … it’s motivational-
Carolyn: Passionate!
Speaker 3: Motivational … They tend to “something”-
Carolyn: Embarrassed?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: 30 seconds.
Carolyn: Oh my God, hurry up!
Speaker 2: Okay, you’re very like…
Speaker 3: I can do anything!
Speaker 2: You’re powerful!
Carolyn: Strong!
Speaker 2: Yes!
Speaker 3: Yes!
Speaker 2: How you probably feel right now.
Carolyn: Stressed! Nervous!
Speaker 3: You feel like-
Carolyn: Anxious!
Speaker 2: Emotions, there’s a lot of emotions.
Carolyn: Overwhelmed!
Speaker 3: Yes!
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes! Okay, you’re mad!
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Carolyn: Mad! Frustrated!
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Another word for-
Carolyn: Angry
Speaker 2: Yes!
Speaker 3: Done!
Carolyn: Okay, well, that was probably fun to watch but … I’m sorry … What were the other words? I wanted to talk today a little bit about how do you manage stress. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m sure, once I play back this video I will see that I showed stress in my body. The more you called out the time, the more stress I got.Today we’re going to talk about: how do you manage stress? I have a question for you …
Now, you’re probably thinking I’m going to ask you, “Is the glass half full or half empty?” That’s not the question. The question I want to ask is, “How heavy is this glass?”
Well, it depends, I mean if I hold the glass for a minute, no big deal.
If I hold the glass for an hour, yeah, my arm might start to ache. If I hold the glass for a day, my arm would probably feel like it would want to fall off.
The key here is the longer I hold it, the more harder it is on my body. Stress is a lot like the water and the glass, the longer you hold onto stress, the heavier and harder it is on you. Today we’re going to talk about 3 quick tips on how do you let go of stress.
1. On a piece of paper, draw a line down the page.
On one side of the paper write the title: What I Can Change. On the other side of the piece of paper write: What I Can’t Change.
Then go through the scenario and write those things down. Then, that’ll give you the wisdom to know what you can change and what you can’t. Let go of thing that you can’t change and change the things you can.
2. Schedule me time.
Schedule time for just you, things that you enjoy to do. You can’t think of things you enjoy? Think back to when you were a child, what did you enjoy to do and do that and inject some childlike fun into your day.
3. Exercise.
Listen, you don’t have to be an athlete, God knows I’m not. Just get a pair of runners, you don’t need an expensive membership at the gym, and just go. As we all know, exercise does the mind and body good.
There you have it. Today I’ve talked about 3 things to let go of stress, 1. Write down that line down a page to determine what you can and can’t change, 2. Schedule me time, and 3. Exercise
I have a question for you, how do you let go of stress?
Leave a comment below. Sometimes the best discussions happen after the episode. If you need a little inspiration, check out this golden nugget and we’ll see you at the next Carolyn Talks.
