7 Tips for Eliminating Stress
Does your daily life resemble something akin to a run-a-way freight train? I suspect you fall among the 80+ percent of Americans who lead chronically stressed, overly-scheduled lives. Living in an exhausted, chronically busy, emotionally tapped out state has become the latest version of ‘more, more, more’, ‘bigger, bigger, bigger’, ‘better, better, better’. Keeping up with the Jones’s began with more credit, bigger homes, and more expensive cars, and has graduated to lifestyles that are literally making us sick. As with anything insatiable, it comes with a cost. Voracious appetites for more (faster, skinnier, perfection, busier, bigger, more stuff, career success, … and so on) as a lifestyle, is often crippling to the body, brain, emotions, and spirit. For most, life needs to make a swift 180 away from stress and business toward freedom, calm, clarity, play, engagement and down time.
Wouldn’t you love to stop and smell the roses? That is, if you had the time or where-with-all to notice the roses? Let’s look at ways to take BACK our lives!
1. Improve Your Eating Habits
MOST of us need seriously upgraded digestive health and seriously improved hormone health and blood insulin mobility to prevent the diseases that are on the rise.
Depending upon your particular body, you may need to find a functional medicine doctor to run labs and help with a plan. But MANY, if not MOST can achieve far better health by adding nutrient dense foods (high fat, organic proteins, and TONS of veggies), and a few key HIGH quality supplements like CoQ10, Vitamin D, DHA/EPA (omegas), and a quality probiotic (research and check with your functional medicine doctor).
Take Action!
Slow down. Eat nutrient dense foods. Take high quality supplements. Get plenty of usable fat (avocado, nuts, seeds, cold pressed coconut oil), eat slowly and chew your food to a pulp for goodness sake (STOP scarfing like a starving dog)! 2. Exercise, of course!
BUT, too much training can be extremely detrimental to your body and brain. Learn more about over training, and the HUGE propensity for most triathletes or other endurance athletes to over-train and way, way, way under-recover in Ben Greenfield's book, Beyond Training.
Take Action! Be at a healthy weight. And for the love of all that is holy, get 8-9 hours of sleep every single night!
3. Give Your Brain Some TLC
Your brain would LOVE a lot more TLC. TLC for your brain might include supplements that support or elevate neurotransmitters. It might require supplements like vitamin D, omegas, coQ10 or magnesium (which the vast majority of Americans are low or deficient in). The brain is delicate , plastic, flexible and easy to damage with environmental toxicity (eating non-organic foods containing pesticides, meats with hormones or antibiotics, or consuming genetically modified foods), breathing in pollutants, or drinking alcohol daily or several days per week, even as little as one glass of wine can be harmful depending upon your unique brain. Learn more about optimal brain health in Dr. Amen’s book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. Take Action! Understand YOUR specific brain, its challenges, and its gifts, then adjust accordingly. Know what it needs more of, less of, and why. The AmenClinics.com is an excellence resource. The brain is a tricky space to navigate, so please, contact me if you you struggle with any of the above and want support or guidance.
4. Balance Your Emotional Bank Account
Wouldn’t you love to melt into calm… Zen… peace… stillness… passion… inspiration? This combination is what the emotional body craves above all as it relates to all relationships, including the one with yourself! Then, it desires connection, significance and meaning in a career, and service to others or mankind. What is the balance in your your emotional bank account? Are you feeling overwhelmed, irritable, cranky or fatigued? Then you might want to make some solid deposits! Take Action! You need to remove people who drain your emotional or bank account. We must get rid of anything - tasks, errands, social outings, work or friendships that cause stress or feel like resentment-inducing obligations.
5. Set Better Boundaries
To demonstrate (to yourself, your heart, and others) that you are worth protecting, loving, and caring for, boundaries are needed. Boundaries are a specific form of speaking your mind, and consist of letting people know how they are permitted to speak to you, interact with you, treat you, or not treat you.
WE, ME, YOU are 100 percent responsible for teaching others how to treat, interact or speak to us. No one treats you in any way that you don’t allow. Of course there are exceptions, a stranger yelling, a mugging, and so on. But from a day to day perspective, the people in your life treat you exactly as you have taught and allowed.
The good news? You can begin setting boundaries any time you like. You can prevent people from complaining, gossiping or judging others in your presence. Setting boundaries will prevent you from being taken advantage of or taken for granted, and from being controlled, bossed, abused in ANY way, or talked down to. Without a strong set of boundaries, you are telling yourself you don’t deserve to live a stress-free, care-free life. You are not taking control.
Take Action!
Boundaries require extreme consistency. This is a must. If you set a boundary one time and not the next, it won’t be taken seriously. Utilize assertiveness, and know that this practice is a gorgeous dedication to self-love, trust and compassion. Boundaries convey undeniable worthiness and unconditional care for ALL parties involved.
6. Be Willing to Choose Yourself
Our gorgeous spirit simply craves simplicity. It longs for softness, gentleness, more self-love and self-compassion, time spent contemplating the stars and the moon and the grass… and sometimes even more self-protection. First, you must be willing to choose yourself. To find yourself worthy of freedom, of slowing down, and of having more peace, calm and self-care. Take Action! Find 5 minutes per day to breathe or meditate. Go outdoors and walk for 15 minutes just for the sake of admiring and connecting with Mother Earth. Practice prayer or other rituals that let you feel close and connected to the Universe, humanity or God.
7. Enforce the 80/20 Rule
Obviously, I am a complete and passionate advocate of a HIGH QUALITY life (which translates to a calm, stress-free one) for all who want it. Well really, for anyone who is brave enough to take it, to create it. A high quality life means creating deliberately while adding focus and meaning. It’s time to ‘cut the fat’ so to speak from our lists, projects, sales, home, friends or family, and closets.
The 80-20 rule is also known as the Pareto principle, the principle of factor sparsity and the law of the vital few. At its core, the 80-20 rule is a statistical distribution of data that says that 80% of a specific event can be explained by 20% of the total observations. It is as stable a principle as the laws of gravity- which is why it is so useful.
Let me share several examples so you can begin to get the idea.
20% of sales make up 80% of revenue
20% of your friends account for 80% of your social annoyance (it’s ok to stop socializing with these peeps!)
20% of your friendships account for 80% of your fun
Take Action!
As you begin to apply the 80/20 principle, I suggest choosing one career piece and one personal piece to start your 80/20 exploration. Begin simple to gain practice to avoid becoming overwhelmed. There are dozens of ways to save TONS of time, and focus your efforts by using the 80/20 principle.
If we want to be optimally happy, healthy and stress-free, we must attune to the needs and necessities of our body, and ALL of its make parts and pieces, from gut to brain to emotions to spirit. Finding the freedom you’re meant to live is all about INTENTIONAL life design and creation. You can take full responsibility for your experience of life. The amount of joy, success and contentment you have, completely depends upon your choices.
Interested in gaining support along your journey? Be sure to check out my upcoming 6-week Freedom From Chaos Telecourse!
The Freedom From Chaos course is a 6-week telecourse designed to help you find freedom from your chaotic life. The course will teach you to find clarity in your hectic life, remove the roadblocks to progress and truly commit to liberated living through structured course content and weekly calls with me, your coach! Interested in learning more?
Feel free to reach out if you'd like support along your journey ad be sure to check out our upcoming Liberated Living Course!
Dr. Haywood believes in limitless possibility and cultivation of expanding human potential with each extraordinary client, group and team experience. While at the same time, stripping away confusion, obscurity, and obstacles in order to arrive at powerful and useful direction and solutions.
Our philosophy stems from the idea that all things and people are connected, impacting, dynamic and malleable. Our formula for defining, carving a path to, and ensuring success applies to life-fulfillment, business strategy, and even marriage strategy. Our coaching methodology can be replicated by clients in various aspects of his or her life. We find this to be a practical and effective method of problem solving, re-direction, result-orientation, and elegant solution discovery.
Tactically, clarity, simple systems, focus, discipline, and ease are the roots of our coaching implementation, and serve as an effective toolbox for seeking calm, fulfillment, and forward movement. Shawn and her team work with people to strip away that which is not working or causing problems, while simultaneously facilitating the most thrilling expression of liberated living, working, connecting, teaming, and value and cultural development and adherence!
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