I talk to people about stress. Everyday.
I think about stress and how it forcefully shapes our lives.
I’m always learning about how stress restricts us on all levels of our humanity. I study how to work with our body, mind, emotions and energy to increase our capacity to hold stress and have more resiliency as we navigate it.
I create, and share, accessible trainings and practices that reduce the toll stress exacts on my life — and the lives of those in my spaces.
So believe me when I say: Stress is costing you and me.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Stress comes with a cost. A huge one.
And most of us are paying the price of chronic stress — whether we know it or not.
(Yes, I’ve met many people who are deeply stressed but unaware of it. Perhaps this is the topic for another day.)
There’s the toll it takes on our current and long term health & wellbeing.
There’s the destruction it brings to our relationships. (40-50% of marriages end in divorce or separation in the US & UK.)
And there’s the impact it has on our business success. (Yes, it is possible to build businesses out of stress, overwork, overwhelm and ‘push energy’, but eventually these foundations will crumble.)
We pay the stress tax with the currency of our joy, connection, freedom and longevity.
We can’t go over, around or under stress. Only through it. Learning how to do this will change your life.
Life is stressful.
Unless you can retreat to a private oasis, in the wilderness, to live off-grid, with an abundance of resources, and a community around you, you are going to have to walk through stress too.
There are two ways you can move.
You can go through stress, stressed and stuck.
Or you can move through stress without being pulled off-kilter.
In order to move successfully from stuckness to Moving Well, it takes a 3-part commitment. One that most of us don’t know we need to make.
The components of this commitment are: Money, Time and Energy.
And the catch-22 is that the very thing we are committing to change is the thing that will sabotage us.
This catch-22 shows up as procrastination, hesitation and a failure to launch (even though, deep within, we feel the call to take this step.)
Let’s explore how and why this happens.
The 3-way commitment we don’t know to make.
Money.
We’re used to spending it to fix our problems. The roof is leaking. We call the roofer. The car is broken. We buy another. Or pay someone to fix it.
In a way. This is easy. Because we’re used to spending.
Except that, if our intention is to create a significant structural change in how we move through stress that transforms its impact on us, we’re not talking about spending.
We’re talking about investing. Investing in ourselves. In our lives. In our businesses. In our joy, happiness & freedom.
The hurdle for some —especially when we’ve been chronically stressed — is that we don’t believe we deserve to invest in ourselves.
We put everyone else first. We put us last.
And actually, the most loving thing we can do for ourselves, and those we love and serve, is to invest in us. With intention. With commitment and with the deep knowing that this investment will have a cascade effect on ourselves and everyone in our life.
The barrier is not a money issue. It’s a self worth issue. See this for what it is. Reclaim your self worth. Invest in you.
Time
This piece of the commitment is a little more challenging. We are so used to living time-poor in a state of overwhelm. We see this as an incontrovertible fact of life.
When actually, time-lack is merely a symptom of our chronic stress.
Stress creates us as feeling busy, without enough time in the present.
This activates us into constant motion. As a fast moving object we are safer than being a sitting-duck.
We constantly reinforce this busy-ness with the words we toss around.
“It’s my busy season.” “I’m so busy.”
Then we future-cast that even if I invest in me, I won’t have the time to use the resource I’ve purchased. We believe won’t have time in the future.
However, time is not the issue here. Your commitment is.
Either you’ve over-committed and taken on a marathon when a 2-mile run would be more beneficial. (Also a symptom of stress!)
Or you’ve failed to commit some of your time with the financial investment you’re making in you.
(This is the reason I make all practices and trainings in my Taster space less than 10 minutes. Easy. Bite-sized. Doable.)
Time is a resource, as is your money. We all have the same amount of time to spend each week. How you spend it is up to you.
So committing to invest your time in you is also essential.
Even while recognising that your chronic stress pattern will do everything it can to convince you that There’s Not Enough time to go around.
And finally, Energy.
By this I mean, how you do the thing that you do. How you approach it. This comes down to your identity.
It’s what moves you from the “Have to” to the “Get to” state.
I have to make dinner. I get to make dinner.
Same act. Different energy. Different presence.
Being in the “have to” energy fosters reluctance leading to stuckness. (Yes, a part of stress!)
Being in the “get to” energy engenders enthusiasm leading to flow. (Not stress!)
So the barrier is not an issue with the thing - the training or the practice. It’s an identity issue.
Who you are choosing to be as you do the thing. Claiming the identity of enthusiasm will support how you move.
Now for The Catch 22
Your stress patterns are there to keep you safe in midst of stress. They will make you hesitate.
And firmly believe that you don’t have enough money, time or energy to do the very thing that will dissolve them.
After all, there is a part of your unconscious brain that is setting you up to fail in your commitment to change your stress.
You’ve been chronically stressed for so long that your very being associates your stressed state as the safest, most familiar place to be.
Consciously, you want to make the shift.
Unconsciously, you don’t.
Thus the stuckness.
So how do you move?
Like this.
Ask the question: Am I done living like this? Constantly in fight/flight/freeze, collapsing at the end of the day into something —anything!— that will make me feel better. It might be Netflix. Or alcohol. Or scrolling. Or gambling. Or running a marathon (Years ago, that was mine, by the way!) or…the list goes on. Am I done paying the cost of stress in how I live, lead and love?
If the answer is “no”keep living in stress. If the answer is “yes,” notice the hesitation and all the ways the pattern of There’s Not Enough appears in your thoughts. Notice you’ll want to continue to try to solve this yourself. But since you’ve just identified that you, yourself, are conflicted between your conscious (I want to (this is your inner knowing guiding you)) and your unconscious (I don’t want to (this is the stress talking)), find yourself a coach, a mentor, a program, a membership. Find yourself a resource that will support you, give you a gentle structure and help you get to where you want to go faster.
As an aside, I spent nearly 2 decades trying to get somewhere on my own. This is why, today, I invest in a coach who holds a safe space and reflects my hidden patterns back to me, even as I do the same in my spaces. This is how you actually create transformation and motion forward.
Notice when you waver and fall into procrastination. Because in the beginning you will. There are several places along the 3-stage journey my clients take where I know they will want to quit. Again, this procrastination isn’t them. It’s their unconscious operating from stress.
Once you have this awareness. Recommit. Re-promise your time, energy and money to yourself as an investment in you, your life, your loved ones and your business. In essence, recommit based on your “why.”
Return to the work. To the practice and teachings that your coach, mentor, guide offers to you. And repeat. Again and again. One small, gentle step at a time.
Because life is too short to live it stressed.
And you don’t deserve to live in contraction, paying tax on stress with your joy, your peace or your happiness.