Happy New Year! I am wishing you an awesome and prosperous new year. Instead of talking about goals at the beginning of the year, I am switching it up.
I want to talk about something that we all deal with. From the board room to the home and in our relationships.
The thing that I am talking about is stress. Stress pops up during almost any event or thought. Stress can be positive.
The reason why I say this is because stress is what helps you deal with challenges and deadlines. But if stress is not managed well, stress can be detrimental to your health.
After dealing with stress in a positive way, I have come up with a four-step process to help with dealing with stress so that you don’t lose your cool.
Check out this episode with learning the four-step process so that you can put it into practice and manage your stress well this year.
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Transcript of this episode
Real Happy Mom 0:04
You are listening to the happy mom podcast the weekly part of the busy work and inspiration in personal and practical tips. My name is Toni-Ann, and you are listening to Episode 164. Well, hey there in Happy New Year, I hope that you had a fantastic holiday. And I’m wishing you a very, very happy new year. I know that I’m super pumped for 2022 for many reasons, one is just a new year into definitely have some really great goals that I’m hoping to accomplish here this year super pumped about it. But before I get into this week’s episode, I just first wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for everyone who has listened week after week, to the episodes that I am posting weekly. Thank you, thank you so much for your support. Thank you so much for listening. Without you, this podcast will not be where it is today. One of my big goals for 2022 is to reach 100,000 downloads, which is something that I know some people who are probably listening like Oh, Tony, and I thought you did that long time ago. Yeah, girl, me too. But that is definitely something that I definitely want to hit not necessarily this year, but within the first three months. And it’s actually my quarterly goal is to hit 100,000 downloads. And the only way that I can do that is with your support and you listening every week. So thank you, thank you so much for listening in. Just wanted to make sure that I said thank you because I don’t think I say it enough. Now, if this is your first time listening, you have picked an awesome episode to tune into especially at the beginning of the year. The reason being is because I know a lot of times you will hear podcast episodes that talk about goal setting and getting things ready for the new year and things of that sort, which I’m all for it, which I have done myself. But there’s one thing in particular that I really wanted to help you with, and that is with handling stress or when life is throwing you curveballs. But before we jump into that, I wanted to take a moment to thank our sponsors for this episode. Our sponsor for this episode is Dermaclara want to make sure that you know about our sponsors, because let’s just be real, I can’t keep making these episodes, unless I am having someone helping with sponsoring these episodes, whether it be these companies that are in brands that are coming in and sponsoring the episodes or through the other sponsors, which would be me doing courses and workshops and things of that sort. It takes money to run this podcast, it takes money to keep this podcast going. So thank you, thank you to our sponsor dermaclara. You can find more information about them. Definitely head over to shownotes to find more information about that. And you’ll be hearing more about that throughout the episode. Alright, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I really have found that even when I am trying my best to plan and to have my routine set and things like that life happens, all right. I think you have experienced that where, you know, you have everything in place. And even when you’re feel like you’re on top of it, you know, things just happen, and you can’t control it. And one thing that I’ve learned is that you can control only one thing, and that is yourself. You can’t control your circumstances. You can’t control the people around you. You can’t control your kids. You can’t control what happens, but you can control how you react. And that is what I wanted to talk to you about today. So a few weeks ago, I had a situation where I was coming home from work. And it was just one thing after another. I was like, oh my god, please do this. Give me a break. Like I know y’all been there, like come on. So I’m sitting there and I’m to the point where I’m about to literally pop off because it’s just work. You know, the husband, the kids, the house, it’s like everything is just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just come in. And so I don’t know what it was. But all of a sudden, I was just like, stop everything stop. Once I stopped, I was like alright Tony, and you got to breathe and calm down. Because like I said, I was about to pop off. Because people just
Unknown Speaker 4:42
come in for me, just to get me to go crazy.
Real Happy Mom 4:46
So I had to breathe. And then once I was able to breathe and calm my body down. Because funny story. I remember one time I was with my youngest son who’s five years old. I was sitting at my desk and I was doing something I was like oh Man, as I started throwing stuff, he was like Mommy, mommy, mommy, calm down, calm your body down. And I remember just sitting there laughing at him because I was like calm your body down. I’m like, clearly your teacher has said that to you many times. But it was so true, like calm your body down. But how do you calm your body down? That’s a good, good question right? In the way that you calm your body down is to breathe. And that is something that we’re definitely going to deep dive into today. All right. So I want to start with this whole fight or flight response that I’m sure you’ve heard about many, many times. So the fight or flight response is a stress response, that is actually a survival mechanism that enables people and also other animals to react quickly when there’s life threatening situations. So think of it as you’re out in the wilderness, and the lion starts running after you. Or you’re out in the dark, and you hear noises growling at you. You know, these are some life threatening things that especially back in the day, before we had internet in Instagram, there were actually some really life threatening things going on, okay. The fight or flight response is, what our body does as it prepares to confront or avoid danger. And when it’s actually invoked, the stress response actually helps us to rise to those challenges. So for instance, going back to when I was talking about the lion, coming in running towards us, when that fight or flight response kicks in, you can do one or two things, you can take our running, or you will fight that lion. And that is something that normally if you just think about it, like you would think like oh, no, I’d never fight a lion. I never went from line. But when that lions run into you, I bet you you’re gonna rise to the challenge then. So the fight or flight response is this automatic, physiological reaction that is perceived when there is stress or something frightening happening. And this is a great response. Like I said, that helped us back in the parliaments of days when we didn’t have all the things that we have now, in particular, because it helps us with actually perceiving what is going on and actually reacting, and then actually activates that sympathetic nervous system and triggers those stress response that prepares our body to either fight or flee, which I was talking about earlier. And one way to really help combat this is to stop and breathe. I know it sounds so simple, and so easy, but it’s not necessarily the simplest task to do. But when you stop and start to breathe, especially when you’re sitting in a comfortable position, or you’re laying down, you breathe in slowly and deeply through your nose, it causes your stomach to expand and rise when you’re inhaling fully. And this breathing helps to lower your stress in your body. So remember how I was saying how my son will be like, Mommy, mommy calm your body down. This is how you calm your body down. Alright, now that shallow breathing, that limits your diaphragm, that’s that muscle that helps you with breathing, it helps eliminate that diaphragm in its range of motion. So the lowest part of your lungs isn’t getting that fully oxygen, oxygenated air, which is what you need. During that time to actually calm your body down. I can actually make you feel short of breath and anxious when you take those shallow little breaths. So you have to take deep breaths in. So I’m not trying to offend nobody out there. But one of my friends when I was pregnant with my second son, he used to call me Buddha belly. And it was because my belly would get so big. And when I would breathe my belly just go out and expand really, really large. And that’s how you want to think of it. Don’t try and think of being pretty cute. Think of your belly getting big, when you’re inhaling in, and then deflate and all of that out. All right. So deep, deep breaths, is going to help with getting the message to your brain to calm down and to relax. Your brain then starts to send the message to your body. Once it realizes, okay, I is not a lion chasing me. It’s just the stress from work, I can calm down and I can think about this clearly.
Real Happy Mom 9:36
So, like I said, taking deep breaths, making sure that they’re deep, deep, full breaths, is going to help with calming you down. So that you can actually start to think clearly, when when you’re thinking clearly you can be more focused and in a calmer state of mind. So I have this four step process that I went through during that time. Like I said, when I was getting super stressed. Like I said, the first thing I did was stop. So a lot of times we are moving, moving, moving, life is just going, going, going, and we’re just getting to the hustle and bustle of life. But you have to stop, stop, breathe. And like I said, take those deep belly breaths in there, get deep breaths. Now, the shallow ones that are just gonna make you anxious and trigger your anxiety, take deep breaths, calm your body down. Once you calm down, then it’s time to think, think, Okay, this is something that I need to handle right now. Is this something that can wait till later? Is this something that is truly important? Is this something that really needs my time and energy? Once you start to start to really think clearly, in your in that focus state of mind, then you can make really, really good decisions. And from there, you can act? So that force that process that I was talking about, is stop, breathe, think, then you act. Okay. So, like I said, life is gonna happen. All right. And I don’t want you to think that, you know, even when you have all your ducks in a row, everything’s perfect that, you know, nothing’s gonna go wrong. You and I both know life, life tends to want to be funny and do things when you think you got it all together. So remember, stop, breathe, think, then act. All right. Now, definitely let me know if you have tried this. And it’s helpful. I know that it helped me out a ton, especially during those times when I was really, really getting stressed out at work. But I wrote this down in my journal and I really wanted to share this with you because I really think that’s going to help. Okay, so remember, stop breathing, then you. Alright, I hope that this is helpful. I hope that you have a great rest of your week. I’ll be back again on Thursday for mommy talk Thursday, as well as Tuesday for another full episode. And this year, I’m going to try to do more. Definitely. In again, take care and with lots of love
