How To Reach Your Goals Part 4 - Manage Stress
How Stress Management can Help you Achieve your Goals.
Tips to Prioritize Stress Management
Stress kills.
Stress itself can’t kill you, but everything associated with it can. It can cause heart disease, heart problems, inflammation, high blood pressure, and ulcers, leading to unhealthy habits and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Let’s tackle stress so you can find your greatness.
Today we’re going to talk about Prioritizing Stress Management.
To achieve your goals, for you to find your greatness, you need to manage your stress in order for you to reach exponential growth.
It’s a necessary element in success, but you need to make sure that you’re prioritizing its management. Whether you’re trying to complete your own 365-day exit from your corporate job to your side hustles, or trying to start a business, or you’re trying to create something new, you need to prioritize this.
Here are 4 tips to help you in that process.
1. Prioritize yourself.
The first thing that you need to do to prioritize stress management is prioritize yourself. Prioritize your wants. Prioritize your desires. Prioritize your family. Prioritize your future, then worry about everything else.
There’s good stress though: eustress, E-U-S-T-R-E-S-S, helps you perform at an optimal rate. It enables you to achieve your potential. It’s the stress you feel when you get butterflies before you have to give a presentation at work, or in front of an audience, or when you are about to run a race. You get nervous, but it is more exciting than it is nerve racking.
All of those things are eustress, and that’s good stress. Chronic stress however, is the stress that lasts the whole day, or hours, and puts your stomach in knots. It might even affect your body in a negative way.
All of that is chronic stress, which is negative stress. That’s the kind of stress that will kill you. Chronic stress is achieving the exact opposite result of eustress.
People say that life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.
Some people don’t like that phrase because it puts the onus on you. It’s telling you that you are responsible for yourself. You’re accountable for your actions. You’re responsible. You’re responsible for your response, and you are.
You can control your stress, and you do that by blocking out negative energy and things that keep you off of your track, keeping you from accomplishing your goal. Some people think that worrying about yourself is being selfish. It’s not. It is okay to protect your peace.
If you start your day with an intention and follow through with your day, try to accomplish those intentions and don’t let anything steer you away from that. You are going to achieve the goals that you set for yourself, while everyone else is agreeing to things they really don’t want to do or really don’t have the time to do. All of that is just adding more stress to their lives.
A lot of people also think they can “multi-task,” which means they can switch from 1 task to another very quickly. That’s called task switching. It’s not multi-tasking. You can’t read and write at the same time. You can’t write and listen. You can’t read and listen.
You can’t do these things at the same time. You can switch back and forth quickly, and it appears you’re doing them at the same time, but you’re not. All of that task switching is causing more and more stress on you.
Here’s a newsflash. There’s no reward for overworking. There’s no reward for “multi-tasking person of the year.” Sometimes those rewards are disguised as a promotion, a bonus, a new job. That is just your boss, your supervisor, or the CEO, ensuring they have an employee the following year.
No matter if it works you to death, no matter if it causes chronic stress, no matter if it’s driving you a whole bunch of health problems, don’t let those “fake” rewards lull you into a false sense of security.
2. Be mindful of the moment and breathe.
The second step to prioritizing stress management is to be mindful of the moment and breathe.
When something happens that you feel is causing an increase in your stress level, ask yourself, “will this matter in five years?” If it doesn’t, don’t spend 5 minutes on it. That’s easier said than done, right?
If you really break it down to those basic characteristics, it will help you with your reactions. Remember, that’s 90% of how you react to it. If it really doesn’t matter, why are you getting all worked up over it? If someone offends you, breath, then move on.
Leave your ego out of it. Our ego gets us into trouble. Leave your pride out of those situations. Focus on yourself. Ask yourself, “Is this helping me accomplish my goal? Is this conversation helping me accomplish my goal? Is this complaint I’m making helping me achieve greatness?”
If it’s not, just let it go. Let it roll off your back.
Previously I’ve discussed getting organized. I mentioned 1% improvement a day, and that comes from the book Atomic Habits written by James Clear.
It talks about just making 1% improvements, and at the end of the year you would see phenomenal change. I calculated it was 3778 or 73% interest on a $1000 investment. If you earn 1% interest every day, it would be 37,000, almost $38,000, at the end of the year.
So invest in yourself, if you’re that $1000, and multiply.
It’s just like running. You can run for five minutes, and then maybe you want to improve. You run for five minutes the first day and then improve 1%. The next day you’ll run for five minutes and three seconds, and then the day after that, you can run for five minutes and six seconds. After 10 days, you’ll be able to run for five and a half minutes, and on and on.
Get the most out of every day. Improve every day. Invest in the most crucial investment every day, which is yourself. Stop betting on other things that are outside of your control. Keep doing that and you’ll see significant results at the end of the week, the month, and the end of the year.
3. Talk
The third way to prioritize stress management is to talk.
Talk it out with yourself first. Next, find someone you can trust. Maybe your significant other, your best friend, your person, your writer, whoever is there for you.
While you’re talking to yourself first, make sure it’s positive self-talk.
If you can’t talk sweet nothings to yourself, why do you expect somebody else to? If you don’t think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, how is somebody else going to assume that?
You need to be talking positively to yourself. Believing that you are the greatest thing, and you can reach unimaginable heights. You need to tell yourself that every day. That’s where positive affirmations come in. Listen to that voice inside your head. What are you saying to yourself? Is what you’re telling yourself helping you achieve your greatness? If it’s not, change the narrative.
Be your number one cheerleader before you can expect anyone else to be yours.
When you’re talking to someone you trust, take the time to get things off your chest. Most of us just want to get it out in the open and relieve that immediate stress, that immediate weight, and talk with someone we can trust and someone who won’t judge you.
Make sure you tell yourself what you need to hear.
4. Get Moving.
The fourth and final recommendation I have for prioritizing stress management is to get moving.
I dare not say exercise because the word exercise, in itself, can stress people out. I think it’s not getting moving that’s the problem. It’s all the stuff associated with getting moving.
Some think about all the things they need to get first before they can start. They think they need new shoes, new clothes, a new gym membership, new equipment, etc.
You don’t have to do all that stuff; just get moving. You can get moving anytime and anywhere. If TV is your thing, on commercials, do some sit-ups, pushups, lunges, squats, whatever your favorite thing is to get moving.
If you’re a Netflix watcher; during those “Are you still watching?” breaks, take 5 minutes and do some arm curls with some light weights, do lunges, do pushups. Maybe go outside, walk around the block and get some fresh air.Just get moving.
Smartwatches check every single movement. I find it funny sometimes when you get a reminder to get moving. I think, “Who needs to be reminded that they’re not moving?” But then when I’m sitting here, writing scripts for my YouTube videos, or answering emails, or working. an hour goes by. I then get a reminder that I haven’t gotten up.
Some people go to work and sit there the whole time. They get up to go to the bathroom, to lunch, or go back home, and they don’t get up from their chair the entire time. Some people do that at home. So, you do need reminders to get up and get moving.
Get up. Do something.
If you live on the elevated floor at home, take the stairs. These are just clichéd things we hear all the time, but they’re all going to work together and help you manage your stress. Our body doesn’t operate optimally when it’s sitting still. You need to get moving, get stretching, do yoga, mindful practices. All of those things are going to help you achieve and reach your greatness.
Learn how to reframe the narrative. If you’re telling yourself something that you don’t want to be true, change it. If someone outside of you tells you something that you don’t want to be true, reframe it, repackage it, and tell a different story.
You are the master of your own fate.
We’ve unpacked a lot in a short time. I’ve told you how to prioritize stress management by prioritizing yourself, how to be mindful, have positive self-talk, talking it out with others, and the importance of getting up and moving.
Nothing I say here will be the panacea. It’s not going to be a cure-all.
No one thing’s going to fix everything in your life, but I do promise you that if you take my suggestion, and you improve just a little bit every day. You prioritize yourself. You work on yourself. You set goals. You will achieve exponential greatness and phenomenal growth.