Change your relationship to Stress

Did you know you have a relationship with stress? It doesn’t just show up and unfold with all its cues and characteristics by accident. The way we respond to stress becomes a program we run that could even have been installed when you were as young as 10 years old. That program may no longer serve you and you probably need to change the way you manage and respond to stress. Becoming aware of how you typically handle stress can help you make healthy choices affect your relationships and finances.

Through documenting and researching stress at our depression treatment centre wee discovered that people became stuck in the first half of life or in their chilhoods so to speak. They experienced one type of fight, flight and freeze or another that was entrenched from years of thinking, feeling and behaving in certain ways. This is the most common formulation of personality which is all focused on survival. Ways that once worked for them in childhood to protect them from stress, but no longer worked for them as adults.

We discovered that people really did need a paradigm shift to move across the stress-response bridge into the second half of life where peace, joy and abundance resided. People become stuck in the prison of the personality without even knowing that is has happened. Depression, stress and tension soon follow because being stuck in any kind of prison is hell. Just ask someone who has dealt with depression for a bunch of years.

Don’t think it is rocket science to Change your relationship to Stress. Many Clients at our Depression Healing Center have used even 1 minute exercises at a time to already start to bring changes, just after a few weeks. Pull out your tools as you learn them here during the day when you have to. Listen on your phone to a favourite MindYoga exercise a few times a day to shift to Sacred Self. Activate. Repeat.

5 WAYS TO CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIP

1. Acknowledge it. Become aware of it. Then manage it. Don’t bury your head in the sand any longer. Dont try and cope. Manage it. It is just information.
2. Let go. Learn to detach from the outcome and understand taht what will be will be. We win some battles to eventually win the war. As long as you’re headed in the right direction, you’ll get there.
3. Celebrate the small victories. Success is a process. Don’t get lost in the stories of wins and losses. If you magnify too far into your process you will be likely to get lost in problems that are minor, this wasting your time without focus.
4. Know thy Stress. There is real and imagined stress. You are likely to imagine far more stress than actually exists. Your brain is wired that way. Keep it real.
5. Laugh and breathe. Pause and take breaks. Contemplate often. Calculate less. Less social media and more meditation. Change your relationship to Stress by less couch sitting and more exercise and good nutrition. Sometimes getting the pace right with stress and slowing down when necessary pays far more dividends than smashing over problems that will get you tired fast. Keep it simple.

Talking of simple. Here is a simple 11 minute MindYoga audio to get you out of autopilot https://on.soundcloud.com/8m16V

CHANGE YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO STRESS

Stress is another central factor contributing to people’s happiness at work. Many companies offer training on how to mitigate stress, focusing on its negative health effects. The problem is, people then get stressed-out about being stressed-out.

“Stress should be a powerful driving force, not an obstacle.”
―Bill Phillips

It’s important to remember that stress has an upside. So when you Change your relationship think positively, think growth and upsides. When “Anne” was working with Pfizer, she asked senior managers to list the five experiences that most shaped who they are today. Nearly all the experiences they wrote down involved great stress—after all, few people grow on vacation. Pick any biography and you’ll see the same thing: Stress is not just an obstacle to growth; it can be the fuel for it. 

It is not the stress itself that causes us harm but rather it is how we respond to stress and how we respond to stress becomes a choice

Mark L Lockwood

Your attitude toward stress can dramatically change how it affects you. In a study Alia Crum, Peter Salovey, conducted at UBS in the midst of the banking crisis and massive restructuring, they asked managers to watch one of two videos, the first depicting stress as debilitating to performance and the second detailing the ways in which stress enhances the human brain and body. When evaluated the employees, six weeks later, found that the individuals who had viewed the “enhancing” video scored higher on the Stress Mindset Scale—that is, they saw stress as enhancing, rather than diminishing, their performance. And those participants experienced a significant drop in health problems and a significant increase in happiness at work.

Stress is an inevitable part of work. The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try this exercise: Make a list of the stresses you’re under. Place them into two groups—the ones you can control (like a project or your in-box) and those you can’t (the stock market, housing prices). Choose one stress that you can control and come up with a small, concrete step you can take to reduce it. In this way you can nudge your brain back to a positive—and productive—mind-set. It’s clear that increasing your happiness improves your chances of success. Developing new habits, nurturing your coworkers, and thinking positively about stress are good ways to start.

It is how you RESPOND to stress that makes all the difference. Andrew Bernstein, the Hollywood director and producer said that “The truth is that stress doesn’t come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about your circumstances.” Damn is he right!

Finally don’t become a victim. Weaken your VICTIM INSURGENT by using EMPATHY this week. Remember your inner child and be curious about the way things are unfolding, rather than feeling stuck. You’re never stuck and there is no rock or hard-place. Reality is much kinder than that.

HOW YOUR EGO INSURGENTS MANAGE STRESS FOR YOU

Ego Insurgents are the super-villians of our minds. They blind us to the truth about who we really are. When you start to learn about which Ego Insurgents have splintered your mind from childhood you can begin to dissolve the power of their egoic defences that wreak havoc on our personalities. Once your Ego Insurgents are discovered, healed and then transformed you begin to awaken. You awaken dormant faculties and talents within yourself that you may never knew existed. We can heal our personality disorders, remove our masks and profoundly heal ourselves from all that once may have held us back from our true potential.

Your 10X ego-insurgents are developed to defend your persona with the impenetrability of a Sherman tank. They are not you. They are the minds outdated operating system. Your ego-insurgents were so important that they kept you alive all this time. They are hard wired into our brains to ensure we survive the perceived chaos of life, growing up and finding our way in life. The ego-insurgents are the container for our early emotions, thoughts and behaviours. When we are older and more capable we no longer need them to protect us. They can easily become just like the overprotective parent – smothering all uncertainty as it appears, driving fear into our hearts instead of away from it. They steer our minds and souls away from anything that appears remotely unsafe.

This works for children, but not for those who have matured into purpose seekers and world changers. If we don’t even know these insurgents have created these false maps we will be left feeling empty, lost and devoid of direction. An example of one of the 10 X insurgents is The Judge Insurgent. Developed in childhood. It is a supercritical voice inside your head, that keeps you away from gratitude and in judging mode, where you can never quite rest. It reminds you how you are never doing it right. 

You can use the Paradigm Process‘s 10 Pathways back to Sacred self to Change your relationship to Stress. If you look at the black column, that is how the mind automatically responds to stress in terms of your personality defence mechanisms. The right column is how we can learn to stay in our core values and stay out of ego defenes that accumulate and compound stress. We call these gems the 10 Pathways back to your Sacred Self. You can learn about mastering them through our courses, events, stays at our centre and online.