Flip Your Stress on its Head - Episode: 015
Ready to transform your relationship with stress and become an even better dad? Today on The Durable Dad podcast, we reveal how our mindset can help us manage stress for the benefit of ourselves and our families. Stress can be a powerful tool that gives us focus, energy, and motivation when managed properly. Learn about the hormones released during stress and how our bodies respond in fight or flight mode.
We'll also discuss why changing our relationship with stress is crucial for improving our lives and connections with our loved ones. By taking control of stress, we can become better fathers and partners. Plus, we'll share some healthy coping mechanisms and ways to adjust our approach to stress in order to become more durable dads. Join us in this insightful conversation on managing stress and embracing the best version of ourselves for our families. And if you're finding value in the show, please leave a review and share your thoughts – we appreciate your support!
Resources mentioned:
Kelly McGonigal – How to make stress your friend
Dr. Alia Crum – Mindset Matters: How to Embrace the Benefits of Stress
Speaker 1
This is The Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, episode number 15. If this is your first time listening to The Durable Dad podcast, welcome. Welcome.
Speaker 1
Today we are going to talk about stress. Super fun, exciting subject. It's a emotion, it's a state that we're in a lot as dads. We need to manage the stress, manage the responsibilities, so we can be a durable dad. We can kind of take on everything that's thrown at us and we get to show up as best as we possibly can. Stress is something that comes up a lot in the guys that I coach and for me as well. When we have a healthy relationship with stress, we can actually start managing it differently. How are we going to manage our stress in a healthy way? by having a healthy relationship with it. Stress can actually be a good thing. That's what we're going to get to.
Speaker 1
Stress comes from our brain. Our brain is perceiving danger in the world and it creates a stress state in our body. This could come from a big meeting that is upcoming. It could come from a big financial purchase, that we have to make big decisions. Our brain is going to perceive the outside world as dangerous. Our body goes into this fight or flight response. What's happening is that our body starts releasing hormones. The central nervous system signals our adrenal glands. That's where all of our hormones are released. It releases two main stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol. What that signals the body to do is increase our heart rate. All of our blood kind of leaves our brain, leaves our digestive system, leaves our immune system, and goes into our body, into our muscles, ready for a fight or ready to run. We call this stress. Usually our heart rate is up. Usually we can feel tight in our chest. When we don't manage stress in a healthy way. We can stay in this stress state for extended amounts of time. We're not thinking straight in our head and very focused in our head. Our immune system isn't getting the attention it needs. It can really drain on our body.
Speaker 1
What I'm going to talk about is our relationship with stress. Usually we think of relationships with other people, but we have a relationship with stress When I'm working with guys on this and we're talking about that feeling of a fast heartbeat and a tight chest and tenseness in the shoulders. Usually it's like I hate it, i want it to go away, i don't want the stress to be there. So that's our kind of default relationship with stress We don't like it And that's a mindset, right? We think that stress is bad.
Speaker 1
And when we think stress is bad and we want it to go away, it perpetuates it And we'll start to cope with stress in unhealthy ways like overeating or overdrinking or gambling or porn, trying to take that edge off of the stress. And there are healthy coping mechanisms for stress. We could exercise more and we can meditate and do some breathing exercises to slow down that stress and to help it move. And those are awesome. And what I've found in me, in a lot of the guys that I coach, that even those healthy coping mechanisms if we still have this thought that stress is bad and we want it to go away, it sneaks back in And what's happening here is that when we think stress is bad, we actually are hating on a part of ourselves And that kind of sounds weird. But think of our central nervous system, right? Our brain is perceiving danger in the world around us with whatever's coming our way, and it tells our body to get on defense, fight or flight, and we release these hormones And our body is responding to what it thinks is danger. And then we go and tell our body and our brain that you're wrong, you're bad, get out of here. And it's an internal struggle And that internal struggle just leads to more and more stress. So to kind of flip this, to have a more healthy relationship with stress, is that we wanna start thinking of it differently, and there's some really cool research that's been done on this. There's a TED Talk by Kelly McGonigal that really drives home how our mindset, how our relationship with stress can heal. It can help us in the long run.
Speaker 1
Dr Aliyah Crum, who's a researcher out of Stanford, has also done different experiments around stress and actually talks about the benefits of stress that when we're in this heightened state and there's adrenaline pumping through our body, we can be more focused and we can have more energy and there's a chance to direct it in a productive way. And another thing Dr Crum talks about is that when we're stressed it means that we care For me. I got two kids, one of them's an infant. I'm running a business and stress can get high sometimes And if I tell myself it's high. I feel this because I deeply care about these things. I can take that stress energy and put it into my family. I can put that stress energy into researching fun things to do and planning out this summer and being focused in that manner. Or in my business, i can dive into building a new group program and researching and stuff that I'm excited about. So stress can actually drive you forward. Stress is there because I care, so that's different than thinking that stress is wrong and I want it to go away.
Speaker 1
There are times, though, when we're super stressed, when our mind is just racing and we're worried about something, and that stress can really start getting intense and can turn into panic attacks. If this is happening and it's starting to kind of overtake our day-to-day life, we wanna turn towards it. We wanna face the stress head on. We want to really acknowledge that it's there and hear out what it has to say. And that might sound funny, right, like hear out what the stress has to say, but our emotions in our body, their signals, they have information that they wanna tell us, and that information comes through our brain. So when we're stressed, our brain, like I said earlier, is perceiving danger, what I'm talking about right now is listening to the brain acknowledging what we're feeling. So, for example, let's just say there's something going on right now that's really just on your mind, stressing you out.
Speaker 1
There's a big meeting that you're losing sleep over and it's a big presentation and your brain starts making it a huge deal. You're feeling anxious, you're feeling worried, you're feeling stressed about it. Here's what you do First you just name it, you write it on a piece of paper or you say it out loud I'm feeling stressed, i'm feeling anxious. Then you locate it. So where do you feel stressed in your body? Oh, my breath is short. I feel it up in my high chest and I feel tight and my heart's pumping really fast. Okay, awesome.
Speaker 1
So now that we've slowed down a little bit, we go to the worst case scenario. Let the brain play this out. What is the brain thinking right now about this meeting? It's thinking, oh, i might lose this big chunk of business, my employees will be disappointed with me, i might lose my job or the company might go under.
Speaker 1
Once you let the brain play out these thoughts and we usually don't do that Usually we try to push these thoughts away, so giving it that space to air out the thoughts. we then can look at those thoughts and just ask how likely is it for each thing that the brain wants to worry about? And just asking that question might give you some type of peace of mind and might alleviate some of that stress. If the brain is still worried, then we can be like all right, what if some of that really did happen? What if you did lose a big chunk of business? What usually is at the bottom of stress is this feeling that if I mess up right now, i'm going to be a failure, i'm not doing a good enough job. So we want to really open up the mind, open up the brain, let it go off down this rabbit hole of worries and concerns that are probably not true, are probably not likely.
Changing Our Relationship With Stress
Speaker 1
And then, once we do this, that messy brain starts to be cleared out and everything that we've written down become strategies to plan around, become obstacles that we want to work through, and now that they're out of our head, we have a clear space to start planning efficiently and start making better decisions and being more productive, because when we stay in the stressed state, we usually procrastinate. When we're pushing and trying to work harder, we're usually scattered and not working on our actual priorities, not really preparing for the meeting And turning towards the stress. Going through these steps of naming it, locating it, going through the worst case scenario, it's going to allow you to be more efficient and crush whatever it is that we're stressed about. It sometimes seems counterintuitive to stop for a second and do an exercise like this. However, it saves you time in the long run and it makes your performance a whole lot better, and this isn't always easy to do on your own. So there's guided meditations that can take you through this. William Ferris has a really awesome fear setting exercise that you could Google and YouTube and he takes you through it step by step. Or you have someone kind of hold this space for you and help you stay with the uncomfortable emotion of stress and navigate and guide you.
Speaker 1
Those are all resources that are out there for you, and the goal here is to have a healthier relationship with stress. Instead of trying to push it away and hate on it, We want to start acknowledging that it's there and we want to start realizing that maybe it can be there to serve us. And when we do that, just like most of the stuff we talk about on the podcast. We are handling our own issues. We're managing our own emotions. So in this case, with our stress, we are owning that.
Speaker 1
Maybe we have an unhealthy relationship with it and we want to change our relationship with stress And when we do, we don't bring it home. We don't bring it home to our families and we can be that guy that is navigating it all. All right, mentioned it on the last couple podcasts, but really appreciate those five star reviews because more guys are going to be able to find the podcast when we have the reviews out there. We're all going through the same life and struggles together and this could be a really good resource. If it's helping you might help some other dudes. So enough of that. Have an awesome week and I will catch you next week.
If this episode hit, don’t keep it to yourself.
Subscribe to The Durable Dad Podcast and leave a quick review. It helps more men find the show and raises the level of conversations happening at home and at work.
Want to take this work further?
Tommy G Coaching is built for high-achieving men who want to show up steady, clear, and connected in their marriage and their life.
