Five Ideas To Transform How You Deal With Stress

Today we're going to be looking at five ideas that will transform how you deal with stress.

What I'm going to introduce you to here isn't the usual how to deal with stress information.

There are no techniques or strategies to learn,

It's what it says on the packet.

This is about ideas and understanding that transforms how you deal with stress without you having to do a thing.

How wonderful is that?

Maybe like me,

When you were younger you used to believe in Father Christmas and then all of a sudden you had some new information and you didn't believe in him anymore.

You didn't have to do any self-development work or put in any effort or anything like that.

It just happened in a flash and this is exactly how this works.

When I came across the understanding I'll talk about here,

I began to look in a completely different direction to the one I've been looking in for all those previous decades of my life.

This is a newish understanding of psychology that completely transforms our understanding of how the human mind works.

It's descriptive rather than prescriptive which means that it tells us how we operate.

It's not a list of things we have to do but once we have this understanding the implications of it transform how we see the world and ourself with ease.

So come on Dawn,

Get on with it,

I hear you cry.

What are the five ideas?

So the first one,

Number one,

Is you're bigger than your stress.

So when life is stressful and difficult,

Especially when we've been living with stress for a while,

We can fall headlong into the trap of believing it's something about us at fault.

We're struggling with stress because there's something wrong with us.

It's not easy when everywhere we look midlife women are starting six-figure businesses or completing arduous physical challenges or looking amazing.

And sometimes it seems to us we're barely able to get beyond struggling out of our pyjamas and lifting the fifth piece of thickly buttered toast to our lips.

We may assume our lack of apparent success and ease is a flaw in our character.

One way or another we put these uncomfortable feelings of stress and pressure down to a whopping great sign there's something missing in us or something wrong.

So what I'm going to say here is please don't entertain these thoughts or get bogged down with this thinking.

I'm here to tell you there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.

We all experience moods and sometimes behave badly.

Everyone sometimes makes poor choices and can make better decisions but this never ever means that you're in need of a character transplant or that you're damaged beyond repair.

No one is broken,

Damaged or needs fixing and that includes you,

Whatever your background or your past.

All anyone is ever suffering from is a misunderstanding,

A trick of the mind and once you see what's really going on you relax into living differently.

I promise you,

You've got within you all the resilience you need to deal with any stressful situation that seems to be hitting you over the head at the moment.

You've already got all the creativity to come up with solutions and new ideas that will help you tackle whatever it is that you're struggling with.

And if you doubt that,

Remember all the times when you've come up with an idea to help yourself,

You have this in you,

I promise you that.

So number two is the idea where does our stress really come from?

Okay so we're taught as we grow up that life,

Circumstances,

Things,

Events,

Situations cause us suffering.

So we learn we're stressed because we've reached our 40s or 50s or because we're overworked or because we're not making enough money.

So what's stressing you at the moment?

When I ask people this question,

The answers I typically get are things like relationships,

Money,

Work,

Children and then coupled with the fact I predominantly work with midlife women,

We can add to that list menopause and perimenopause symptoms and all the additional strains that strike us at this time.

Like fears of aging,

Worrying that we left it too late to do all those things that we always wanted to do and even stress at being stressed and worrying about what it's doing to our health can cause problems.

And so if we believe this is where our stress is coming from,

What do we try to do?

We try to solve our problems by doing something and this is so ingrained it seems beyond obvious.

We go to marriage guidance to talk about our issues with a partner or we leave the marriage.

We work hard to solve the too much work problem but the thing is when we're feeling stressed and overwhelmed we don't necessarily make the best decisions,

Our judgment isn't clear and so we feel overwhelmed.

We act from a place of stress.

We feel even more stressed then because either the original problem wasn't solved by our intervention or there are just more problems and stress building up in piles and piles all around us.

And once more we take action from a space of strain or we try stress management techniques to try and subdue the feelings we've got,

The symptoms of body and mind.

But very often we have to keep doing them to maintain the benefits and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.

This is not to say if you're experiencing lots of physical symptoms of let's say menopause you don't go and talk to someone about your diet or learn more about what sort of exercises are going to work for you.

This isn't about giving up and simply taking what life throws at us.

But what I want you to understand is that stress never comes from what's outside us.

This lack of money or health issues,

Relationship problems,

This isn't where your stress is coming from.

If we think it is we'll act on those external problems to try and fix them and maybe that will help and maybe it won't.

But if we turn our attention to the real cause we've got a far better chance of sorting it all out.

Which leads me on to idea number three.

So number three the idea is that our stress comes from our thinking.

So the real cause of our stress is our thinking.

It's what's going on inside our heads and that's why sometimes a situation like for example the car breaking down sometimes gets us panicking and other times we're calm and collected.

We experience life through our thoughts never ever be experienced directly.

So that means that nothing in our life can make us feel a certain way.

If it did we'd all feel the same about a particular situation and this would never ever change.

Let me give you an example.

Take the time of life we're at.

So for some women this seems to be a difficult time at the end of youth and a slippery slope of nothing much of interest or excitement until the end.

Others may see it as the start of exciting new episode in their life,

A time of new opportunities and discoveries.

And even within the same person we all know that some days with some moods our life can seem wonderful and other days it just feels all drudge and disappointment and gloom.

So we're living in an experience of our thinking never a direct experience of life.

Our stress is always always caused by our thinking.

Now I know that there will be some situations where you'll be able to see this easily and others where it'll be hidden.

But this truth never changes although our ability to see it rises and falls.

If this is all making sense that's brilliant but if it doesn't use your own experience to experiment and see what you notice.

The next time you feel stressed see if you can step back a little mentally from what's happening.

Observe your own thoughts.

Chances are if you're stressed you have a whirlwind of thoughts rushing through your mind.

Thoughts for example like I can't cope with this,

This is never going to change,

What will everyone think of me,

What if I can't handle this,

Feeling like this is making me feel ill and blah blah blah blah blah.

Thoughts will be rushing around in your head.

Conversely when you're in the same situation another time and you're not feeling stressed thoughts may go along these lines.

Okay so this is the situation what do I need to do about it?

Do you see the difference?

It's all internal in our head.

So the truth is that our stress is always caused by the interpretation of what's going in our heads and our feelings are nothing more than a feedback mechanism of how useful our thinking is at the time.

So number four we don't have to believe our stressful thoughts.

I've always been an anxious person,

Easily stressed and for most of my life I felt the only way to deal with my stress thoughts was to put them under the microscope.

I believed if I analysed them,

Try to discover their origin,

Reason with them I'd be able to rationalise them away.

Understanding was my way to go about dealing with them.

Except if I'm honest this strategy never really worked.

This method was a train track to doom and gloom because one negative thought led to another until I was completely swamped.

Giving my full attention and spending quality time with what was stressing me,

Thoughts if anything encouraged them to grow and multiply.

When I was introduced to a deeper understanding of how humans work at a fundamental level my perception completely changed about the nature of my thoughts and I dramatically reduced the time and attention I gave to them.

Subsequently their power over me started to drift away.

I understood finally that I didn't have to trust my thoughts or believe them and I began to attach far less importance to them.

So if thoughts are not the truth they have no power to hurt us and I no longer needed to cling to my metaphorical teddy bear for comfort.

What was also interesting was that the activities I'd always clung to to try and soothe my stress,

Maybe watching mindless tv or scrolling indiscriminately on facebook also drifted away without me doing a conscious thing.

We can't control our thoughts and it's impossible for us to control which next thought is going to appear in our mind.

In that respect we're not in the driving seat but where we do have control is in our decision whether to follow these thoughts or not.

Our thoughts and the way in which they come and go is part of being human and of being conscious beings.

We're not flawed or somehow wrong because we have them and this isn't about positive thinking or trying to control the down stressed thoughts.

You know one of the ways we try and deal with stressed thoughts is to turn them around,

Make them positive,

Reframe them or maybe keep them tightly under control.

But in a way this is giving ourselves unnecessary work.

If we understand that all thoughts are just passing through and another one will be along very soon there's nothing to be done with them.

All we need to do is just see it's simply a thought,

One in a long line of thoughts,

No more or less important than the one that preceded it or the one that will come along very soon.

So my final idea,

Number five,

Is to trust your own inner guidance system and it's about how we can tap into the inner guidance system that's always there for us once our mind is quieter.

It's funny but once you start to take your thoughts less seriously they start to fade without you having to study meditation for 20 years or to do any daily mindset rituals.

And once this happens you'll notice that the mind is less cluttered with noisy thoughts and it's far easier to tap into your own wisdom and guidance.

This is the place that's always available for inspiration,

Always doing fine no matter what crisis or drama shows up in your life.

It's the part of us that's there waiting for us when we're relaxed and happy.

For me it shows up naturally when I'm by the sea,

Swimming in the waves and relaxing.

It's a deep contentment.

My thinking is calm and slow and it's when a deep knowing is likely to show up.

So can you think of times when you felt this way?

A time when you just know whatever issues or problems are turning up in your life that all will be well.

Perhaps you've had the solution to a problem just pop up in your mind or you suddenly felt a deep wisdom guide you just when you need it.

Simply by virtue of being human we all have these qualities and abilities.

They're a fundamental part of who we are and we don't need to learn any techniques or do anything to tap into them.

We simply need to clear away the clutter of thoughts and there they are for us.

You see as I said earlier none of us needs fixing whatever issues or problems we think we have.

In all of us lies a foundation of emotional and mental wellness that we can draw upon.

A guidance system that's there whenever we need it.

So I hope you've enjoyed these five ideas.

There's so much more I could say about all of these areas of how once you really see this experience of life totally changes and it's not just me saying this.

This understanding has been used to help people all over the world in prisons,

Deprived environments,

You name it.

So if it's made complete sense that's absolutely brilliant.

If it hasn't well just stay with it,

Play with the ideas,

Experiment and see what you notice for yourself and I would love to hear from you.

So let me know how you've got on,

Send me any questions and I look forward to getting to know you more very very soon.

Thanks for joining.