How To Manage Stress

You got questions? Hopefully I have the answer. One of your questions today, maybe why is he sitting in a bean bag chair? We’ll get to that later, but for now we’re gonna talk about stress. That’s right! In today’s video, I’m gonna cover one of the most commonly asked questions I get. And that is ‘how do we manage stress?’ Today I’m gonna talk about that… chronic stress, the stress that we’re experiencing, not from a traumatic incident, just the day to day kind of rigor that can build up on us and really stress us out. Let’s get right into it. So first I always get asked the question, ‘Sam, how did you remain so calm? Even though you have business, you have a bunch of kids like aren’t you under a lot of stress. Yes. To answer that question? Yes. I do experience a lot of stress, but I use simple frameworks just to manage that stress, and accept it and move past it. 

So the first step to managing your stress is (1) acknowledge that you are going to experience it. No one’s gonna live a stress free life, especially the way the modern society is set up. We’re very, very hypersensitive to stress. Just being on our phones all the time, being on the internet all the time, comparing ourselves to others, things like that automatically start to really ramp up our stress. So acknowledge that you’re probably going to come across it, daily.

So after we acknowledge that, we wanna (2) identify when we’re feeling stressed. And what does that feel like to you? This is obviously gonna be individualized. Some people get headaches, some people feel anxiety. Some people feel nauseous, even, really identify. What is that feeling you get when you’re super stressed out? For me, it’s a headache.

So after we identify that feeling, we wanna know, okay, (3) what is the cause of the stress? Where’s the stress actually stemming from? You wanna identify the problem? Is it a family problem? Is it a financial problem? Is it a health problem whatever that is? We want to actually identify the problem. So I’ll use the example in this, for work. Let’s say that I’m feeling stressed out because of work. I don’t want to just stop and say it was because of work. I need to get into the real reasons behind what’s happening at work. So maybe it’s a coworker that I’m upset with, or somebody’s not doing their or not pleased with my role. I need to explicitly think about that. A lot of times people will push away their fears or what’s stressing them out. And they won’t think about it all. They’ll hold their breath and it actually makes it worse. So what I’m challenging you guys to do is next time you’re stressed out.  

You identify what’s causing that stress. Think about it and breathe consciously. You could sit down in a beanbag chair, sit down wherever. And this sounds, I know it sounds very basic, but just (4) breathe. Take four seconds in through your nose, hold it for four seconds. Blow four seconds out through your mouth. Do that a few times. You’re gonna automatically start to feel better. One thing we don’t want to hold our breath or really contract into that fear or something I always talk about is we want to expand into love, right? So after we think about that, we breathe on it. We want to think about, okay, what can you do right now to control, to change your outlook, to change what’s going on? You want to (5) expand your love. In other words, I know that sounds kind of cheesy and corny, but that’s, that’s the way I look at it. We want to think about how we can bring more happiness and light, from that moment forward. 

So think about an activity you love to do. You just really, you, all you’re doing is breaking up that cycle. You’re giving yourself a little time to decompress by breathing, and then you’re moving on to something that’s gonna move you forward. So go for a walk, take your dog out, talk to your spouse, journal, write… This only needs to be 10 minutes long, and then you can move past it. If you follow those simple steps, you will feel much less stress, feel a lot more calm, and relaxed. 

So again, first we want to identify the physical symptom, whether it’s a headache, it’s nausea, whatever it is we want to identify what specific stress is causing that that day. We want to create a little barrier, a disconnect. So sit down, breathe, and actually think about what was causing you stress that day. Try not to let it stress you out more, continue to breathe into it and then think about, okay, I’ve thought about this stress. 

I’ve thought about the negativity now, what am I gonna do today to expand into love? What am I gonna do to move past this? Find an activity that you enjoy, short activity. It only needs to be 5, 10 minutes. It can be longer to it doesn’t need to be anything major, practice that. And I promise you, you will start to feel less stress in your life. That’s all I have for you today. Hope you guys found value in this video. If you loved it, give me a heart. If you liked it, give me a thumbs up and as always, stay strong.