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Creating New Habits To Fight Stress

it's been an adventure to kind of look through what we've, what stresses about and then the places where you can make a difference in stress today is really going to be a little bit fun because we're going to go through and say okay now of all the things you've heard, maybe you picked out something that you really do want to do a change you really want to make and dang, Why is that so hard? Why do we wake up in the morning and think, you know, today's the day I'm going to start building this habit and it's really hard to do. So we're going to dig into that and give you some structure so that you can pick 11 tiny little thing that you really want to do to have less stress in your life and then make yourself successful doing it. Just be able to check it off the list of this is a habit and we're gonna do it, but you're gonna think about, you know, so what would that one thing be? I love this quote from mary Oliver, tell me what is it you plan to do with his one wild and precious life. Jus...

t let that sink in a minute. You know this is this whole being here is a gift and we can get so so busy and so distracted and enmeshed in the details of day to day and the things we've forgotten to do in the present. We were supposed to have thought for the party we're going to and the project that we need to turn in. We forget the beauty that we have this gift to be here. And so developing ways to fight stress includes developing ways to just be grateful for that and decide what you want to do with it. So knowing that this is your gift, what is the big goal for you who do you want to be? And you've all heard me say that a lot through session one and session to, but it is about deciding who to be more than what you're going to do because when you decide who you're gonna be, you're gonna have self leadership, that's how this fits into my leadership world. Good leadership comes from deciding who to be and that informs what you're gonna do. So that's why we've gone through some exercises of our values which you can do in the workbook and strength, which you can see the link in the workbook to really define and know who you are so that you can choose who you want to be and what you're going to do with that. As you listen today, I want you to think, just pick one little habit, something you've heard along this path or something we talk about today that it excites you. You want to try it. You just think, you know what, maybe that would make a difference. It doesn't sound like it's gonna drive me nuts. Trying, it's not overwhelming me, it's a little thing and I want to try that and I'm kind of excited to try it. That's what we're looking for. Just a little thing that you want to try and then we're gonna talk about how to put that into play and the attitude with which you do. That is important. Remember that this is all research, it is all research into your life, what is going to make you the most effective in your life. So what type of habit would you pick? Well, we've talked a lot about how stress management really is energy management so often. It would be a habit that's going to give you more energy at the end of the day. And that could be physical energy, Mental energy, emotional energy or spiritual energy. And by spiritual, I mean that connection, it can be your faith, but it also can just be your connection to the people who matter most for you or to your purpose. That feeling of why you're here. That's an important connection. So physical energy is the basis. We if we don't meet our physical energy needs, we can't do anything. Then we meet our mental energy needs. Then we meet our emotional energy needs. And spiritual is the peak of the pyramid. And what we need to do is find some balance ways that we can match where we get energy from, how we spend our energy. Do you have this precious time? Energy and focus? How do you want to spend it? And how are you going to renew it? There's a great article by Tony Schwartz at all in Harvard Business Review from years ago and they're updated articles too. But I love this initial one called the corporate athlete, and he compares how we work today, whether we're in business for ourselves or we're within a corporation, how we work today with how we train an athlete and for an athlete, we know you can't put them in for the whole game and not give them a rest. We know that they have to be mentally charged and emotionally secure to get into that game and perform well. We know this from the time we send little kids onto the soccer field, we know that that's necessary and we know that we have to have their spirits up to feel engaged with the purpose, to feel engaged with the team. Yet when we look at our own lives and how we go to work and how we live our lives, we tend to forget that those are basic needs. So that's what I'd like to find today is some some habit that's gonna support your needs so that you'll get to renew again and you'll have your time out on the bench that you need and you'll have your ra ra, you know, this is why I'm doing it. I'm part of the team, feeling all of those things that make for a successful game or a successful life. So I wanted to talk for a minute about why I use the word habit. Um habits have been buzzed around a good bit recently. Some great books on habit forming habits, habits, save energy. Can you imagine if you got up in the morning and you had to remember to put whichever foot down first on the floor and stand up and you had to remember how you walk to the bathroom and what else you do in the bathroom and you had to remember how to put the toothpaste on the brush and which side of your mouth you were going to put the brush in like right now. Stop and think, where do you start brushing your teeth? We all pretty much do it as a habit. Do you go up and down? Do you go back and forth? You start on the right left. Imagine if you had to think of that over and over again every morning. I don't know about you but I don't think I'll ever make it to work. I'd be exhausted. I would have had to concentrate already too much. So you're actually saving energy when you form a habit. So there's this really cool win win. What if you form a habit of something that gives you energy? You really, you're saving energy, getting energy and that's definitely a win win. Does that make sense to you all? So we all have habits, Some of us, we're going to talk a little bit about this, some of us that support us and we have habits, some that really don't support us as well, and some of those are behavior habits and some of them are thought habits. We're gonna go through some of those and talk about how they sometimes sabotage our desire to form a new habit. I want to talk for a moment about stopping habits versus creating a new habit. And we touched on this in the other session, but if you want to stop something that's become a habit, it is so darn hard. The minute you say, you're gonna stop doing something, your brain is in there going, I don't think so, we're gonna keep doing that because we do it really, really well. In fact, I think now I'm gonna tie to your reward center. So the minute you try and stop doing something, especially something that has chemical joy to it as well, such as nicotine or sugar or something that is lighting up your brain the minute you try and stop something, it's really, really difficult. It's also difficult to create a habit de novo from nothing because you're, you have to ask different parts of the brain to start to wire together to do this. But there's some cheats to this system instead of saying that the thing I want to do to be healthier is to stop doing something that's unhealthy, replace it with a new habit you tie to it, you're not creating something out of nothing. But every time you have this urge to do the old habit, you add in the new one, it's it's kind of like you have these ruts in your brain that things typically go down this path, like water runs down through the trough and you're gonna start digging a new one so that the water has a way to divert And go down a new one. It doesn't mean that you're ever going to lose that instinct or it's not really an instinct. You're never gonna lose that desire to go down the first path, but you're going to replace it with a second path because our brains don't like to really let go of anything, but we can ask them to keep learning new things and that's what neural plasticity is, That's been the buzz word for the last decade, this ability to learn new things to not just accept that, you know, I have these habits that I do and that's it. We can create habits that we want. So let's talk about where you want to go with this. What would your goal be? We've talked in the last few days about your best state of flow and that is that state where you really are just on and it's an effortless on, it could be you standing up to hit the golf ball, it could be you taking pictures and it's just you, you've got the light, you you just feel it. You know what you're taking is right or doing a piece of artwork and it's just coming ideas flowing to you. We are in conversation with somebody and the ideas just seem so easy and time is suspended. It's this really lovely feeling usually for that feeling, your energy needs have been met. So we want more of that feeling, don't we? I love that feeling. I love when you feel like you just really are accomplishing something without so much work. So that's the goal. So in the note in the workbook, we are on page two of part three, which is about, I'd say 8/10 of the way through, maybe page two of part three at the top of that. Write down, what is your big picture goal? What do you want all of this to support? You're going to create habits that give you this better state of flow? Why what do you, what's the big picture? What are you after? Who do you want to be? So just a few words and you can come back to this later. In fact, you can download it again and go through this multiple times with different habits, but always starting with your why you want to do it. It's gonna make you so much more successful. And that is in my um the pdf that you can download on the tips for fighting stress. Why do you want to do this? It's the place to start. And then the next part of that is thinking about, okay, what does my best state of flow look like? When am I in that space of flow? Like the water effortlessly goes by these rocks? When am I in that state when it just seems effortless? And what, what does that feel like for me? And then I think you probably could think of some things that you already do that support that state and I'd love to hear some of those. What are some things you do that support you being at your best. Maybe their habits you already have in place that help you be more clear, help you be more focused or bring less effort to something