Your Stress Buster Menu
Mindset Monday - Episode 11 Transcript
How many times in the week were you stressed out?
It's a simple question and I know that happens to all of us. Mindset Monday, your week begins now. In those last two or three days, how many times when you were stressed out did you go and seek something that was not as productive for you and didn’t really help you? What if there was a way that you could delete only the stress that you want from your day? Wouldn't that make you a lot more productive? Wouldn't that allow you have a better time of life rather than going through the day stressed out and pulling your head out and just being really frustrated. I know in the last two or three days you’ve been stressed. I know I've had some stress in the last two or three days. It's natural, you're human, and you’re going to have stresses.
I'm Shane Fielder with Samurai Innovation where we blend the secrets of the Samurai with cutting-edge strategies to sharpen you and your business results. One of the things I do with my coaching clients is we advise them to build the stress busting menu. Yes, when you go to a restaurant and you open up a menu, you're hungry, you select something off the menu and you eat it and you feel nourished and you leave the restaurant happy. What if you could do the same thing with your stress? What if when something stressing you and anxiety and for some people it's a headache, for some people it's the knot in their stomachs, for some people it's the sweat pouring down their face, the fast breathing. I don’t know what it is for you, but I know that I’ve suffered all of those things and it's not a fun place to be. Now we need to have our stress busting menu that you can go to this week and be more productive.
Here’s what you need to do to build your stress busting menu.
You start on a high day when you’re at high energy and it’s a 10 out of 10 day. This is the day when you're walking down the street and you're smiling and you're looking at the blue sky and people are smiling at you and you hear the birds singing, it's all great, it’s a beautiful day and you're on top of the world. This is a day you're going to design your stress busting menu.
You need five go to things that you can put on the menu. These are the five things that no matter how stressed out, how crappy of a day you're feeling, you can go to one of those things and it will change you right there. It can change the mood and it will get you going.
It's a more productive way to go about your stress than taking a drink, having a cigarette or doing something else that is maybe not as productive for you. I have 12 surefire things and I’m just going to read them out to you right now.
1. DO SOME DEEP BREATHING: Do some deep breathing whether you’re breathing this way or breathing this way or whatever. Later on I'll show you some breathing techniques that I use that are really good. The simplest one that I can recommend is breath in through your nose and out through your mouth and the exhalation should take twice as long as the inhalation. I already feel better; I hope you feel better from that.
2. CRANK UP THE TUNES AND GET MOVING: Have a playlist on your phone; create a CD if you're old-school; whatever. Have a playlist of your top 10 go to get you moving songs. It has to get you moving. Don’t put on quiet music that makes you want to go to sleep. This is stuff that are going to get you from angry, stressed out, pulling your hair to next thing you know you're dancing and you're ready to go.
3. MOVE YOUR BODY: Get up and walk away from your stress. If you’re watching the 200 emails come in, you might want to just get up and walk away, that might be the most appropriate time for you to get up and walk away from your stress. Go for five or ten minutes, but walk around the office or the block around your home. Go outside, get some fresh air and move your body. I have some clients, they do push-ups, they do squats, they have a little routine they do, it helps get the blood flowing and it reinvigorates yourself.
4. MAYBE MEDITATION DOES WORK FOR YOU: Maybe can go and find a quiet place in your office, close your eyes and just go to a meditative state and go to somewhere calm, it allows you to refresh. I know a lot of friends that swear by meditation and they know that in those moments that meditation can really help them.
5. TAKE A NAP: There’s tons of research that shows taking a nap in the middle of the day is a great way to relieve your stress, relieve yourself of the tension and a lot of other stuff. Maybe just sit back in your work chair and you close your eyes for 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe you go and jump in your car, drive to a parking lot somewhere and take a 15 minute nap, it’s a great technique. Ultimately you probably also want to check how much sleep you're getting at the end of the night as well and see if you can amp up the sleep a bit.
6. COLOR: There is no shortage of research and coloring books at every bookstore or local newsstand shop or every airport that you're going to be in. There's a coloring book and some people just take up a color and it’s cool. There are all sorts of books; there are all sorts of themes just do it.
7. IF YOU'RE STRESSED WITH SOMEBODY: What you can do is you can yell or talk into a voice recorder and you can tell them what you really think of that person. And then the only thing I really tell you after that is hit the delete button and make sure it’s gone forever.
8. WRITE A NASTY LETTER TO THAT CERTAIN SOMEBODY: Write everything you want on a piece of paper and how bad you feel and how angry you are with them and how they're stressing you out and how they're overworking you or overloading you or how inconsiderate they are and how much of a jerk they are and just write it all down on the paper and then guess what, walk over to the shredding machine and shred that thing. Get rid of it and then it’s gone, it's a great tactic.
9. JOURNAL YOUR THOUGHTS DAILY: Recently I've switched to going back to hand journaling. I bought some nice pens in Japan, I got some nice journals and I'm writing all my thoughts at the end of the day. I'm a huge tablet guy, I love being in the digital world, but there’s just something about writing in pen ink on paper, the tactical feel of it, releasing the thoughts from my mind to the paper, there's something just amazing about that, so Journal daily if you can.
10. PHONE SOMEONE WHO MAKES YOU SMILE: On your stress busting menu you might say phone Ted, Mary, Bill or Chris and those are the people that you know that if you phone they're going to answer the phone and they're going to be in a good mood and they're going to lighten your day and brighten your level; call them and have that number handy.
11. HAVE SEX IF YOU CAN: Find your spouse, your partner whatever and go have some sex, it’s all good.
12. DRINK TWO GLASSES OF WATER IMMEDIATELY: A lot of times we are stressed out because we don’t have enough hydration in our system and if you just pound in two glasses of water right away, next thing you know that stress level will come down and you'll start feeling good maybe you'll walk up to the washroom, you get your body moving and you feel better.
There you go; those are 12 cool things that you can do to de-stress yourself. Make up your own, find out what works for you, but put them on your menu and then create that menu, put it in your phone, attach it to your desk whatever. Have it there so that this week when the stress comes, it's not if. When the stress comes this week, you are prepared for it, you go to your menu, you pick the one that’s pulling on your heartstrings at that point and you de-stress and you delete the stress that you want right there, right then.
I'm Shane Fielder. Please leave a comment let me know what your stress busting technique is, I'd love to add it into the post here, because definitely you know things that I don’t know and I know in our community, we have such intelligent people in our community and I want you to share with the rest of the community what works for you.
When will You build your stress busting menu?
The sooner that you do this, the better off you will be. Let's see who is brave enough to share your music playlist in the comment section below. It will be great to share what music gets you moving into fun, playfulness and sanity.
Who knows, you might find your new best song from fellow Dojo Members. I will share mine when you share yours in the comments below.
Domo Arigato.
