[00:00:37] Vesna: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. I'm gonna talk about why stress is not the enemy and how it makes us stronger under pressure.
Now, are you someone who avoids stress, who can't wait to get through stress? Or are you someone that kind of dives straight into challenges knowing that it will create stress? But you're okay with that because you've got somewhere to go. You've got the drive, you're on a [00:01:00] mission, and it doesn't matter, right?
So I see both, right? I see women on a mission, and then I also see women who have, been so stressed for such a long time that it's led to burnout and. Why I wanna talk about this is because stress gets a really bad name, and in this podcast I really wanna differentiate between stress and challenges because stress is more of an emotional response.
And challenges are what comes up that we can't always control. Or if we are moving in a certain direction, like we are wanting to do big things in our business or in the world, we are going to come up against challenges. And that's very normal. But that can create, feelings of tension and stress within us.
but not all of it's bad. Okay. So in the early part of discovering. You know, going from burnout to peak performance, I thought the only way for people to recover if they were burnt out is to remove all the stress from their life. And so I went about, you know, helping people to do that through, helping them with their relationships, with their, you know, work schedules and all of that kind of [00:02:00] stuff.
But really the results were a bit lackluster. Okay. Because. One, we are never going to remove all the challenges from our life, and we don't need to. Okay? Because actually challenges are part of this life. And if you're in business, it can feel like an emotional rollercoaster. And in business, or if you're doing anything that's, you know, creating something new in the world, there's going to be challenges, and that's very normal.
But challenges help us to stretch and grow. You know, I was hearing a doctor say the other day that actually when we run and do, any kind of heavy lifting or any kind of workout, or even if we break our bone, we're getting a fracture, a stress fracture, and I've had a few, and actually it becomes, you know, the bone becomes even stronger at that point.
So it stimulates bone growth. Okay. And that same with exercise. We know with muscle growth, if you train so hard that you. Trained to the point of failure, like you can't do another rep, right? You actually, your muscle fibers [00:03:00] tear and then they grow. And so even in our body on a physical level. You know that stress makes us grow and thrive.
And then when you look at life, like, think about the moments in your life where you had a significant challenge to overcome, and maybe it was an illness, or maybe it was a divorce or a bankruptcy, but some kind of major turning point in your life that was very stressful. But actually from that place. So much changed about you, who you are as a person, or the results that you've had created in your life.
Like it brought about a significant change in your life due to a very stressful, painful event.
so in that way. Yeah, these challenges really force us through, you know, within our body or from life coming at us or within our business. They force us to stretch and grow. And when you think about it, that's why we set challenges. That's why we set deadlines. That's why we move, like if you're on a mission or you want to do things differently or you wanna become more successful, like [00:04:00] there's a driver there.
To push you because there's going to be significant growth and part of our innate drive is to become the best versions of ourselves. You know, I talked about it before Abraham Maslow and the hierarchy of needs. He said, we are always striving to self-actualize to become the best versions. Who we are, who we can be, because that gives us meaning in our life.
Okay? And so if you are going to step forward into self-actualization or being the best that you can be, you are going to come up against challenges, which can create stress. But stress isn't all bad because it's creating so much growth for us. But we need a recovery plan. otherwise we are going to just burn out, okay?
We're not going to be able to cope with that level of stress or challenge. So Kelly McGonal, she wrote a book called The Upside of Stress. In her research, she found that stress, if you deemed stress as not bad, it didn't affect your health in a negative way. But if you saw stress as harmful, [00:05:00] then it actually did have negative health consequences.
And so She also found in her research that when we're stressed, our body also releases a hormone called oxytocin, which is kind of, you know, she calls it the cuddle hormone or the love hormone that also gets released. That encourages us to seek, support or protection, and that also boosts our resilience.
A part of Kelly's research was, you know, this view on how you see stress, right? And so if you see it as bad, it's gonna have a bad effect. And if you don't see it as bad, it doesn't have a bad effect.
And this can look like, like I remember, um, hearing a story, I think it was an interview with Bruce Springsteen, the singer, and he said that, I think someone asked him like before, do you ever get stage fright or do you, you know, and he's like, no, but before I go out on stage, I just get so much energy in my body that I'm virtually shaking and I just know that I'm ready to get out there and, and do my best performance.
And the interviewer was like. But that's anxiety, that's stress, that's stage. You know? And he's like, oh no, I just feel like [00:06:00] I'm getting ready for the best performance. Right? And so it was that way of viewing it that wasn't harmful to him. 'cause he saw it as his bo body was prepping him to give the best show of his life.
Right? So it was a positive thing for him. It was helping him, it was encouraging him rather than, uh, being an obstacle. And when you look at it, like people who have, jitters or exam jitters or get nervous before an exam and they're looking at footballers who said before they get. That pregame anxiety, they didn't see it as anxiety.
They saw it as being amped up for the best game. But the pre, you know, the exam jitters and the pregame anxiety are exactly the same psychological response. It's just one is viewed as helpful and one is viewed as not. And that is what Kelly McGonagal was pointing to was that if we saw those scenarios, is actually our body is just prepping us to get into the game to overcome these challenges.
'cause really the stress response is just about releasing. So much energy in the body that you can fight or flight, do what you need to do, right? So if we [00:07:00] viewed it as something that was supporting us rather than hindering us, then that would have a completely different reaction on our body, which is pretty fascinating, which really does make sense, right?
When you hear those examples of the footballers pre-game and the exam jitt.
I remember reading a book about a guy called Josh Kin. He was a really high performer. I think he was like a chess savant or something like that, but from a very young age, he became a world champion in chess. Okay. And then he decided to try his hand at, I think it was pretty sure it was martial arts.
And then later on, um, I think in his twenties he became the world champion in martial arts. So he became world champion of two completely different sports, which is pretty amazing. And they asked him, they said, well, you must be really gifted, you know? And he said, no, I don't put that down as being gifted.
He goes, I really, the way that I became so successful is I learn to balance. Uh, and juggle or balance between stress + recovery okay? And so he really saw that stress. If you combine stress and [00:08:00] recovery, you can master skills. You can become a champion, okay? And when you look at it, athletes, they put themselves under extreme physical, mental, emotional stress.
Yet they are champions. Okay? And they always have a recovery plan. They always look after their body and their sleep and things like that. I remember reading about a runner, and I can't remember her name, but she, she ended up becoming like a bronze, uh, she won a bronze medal in the Olympics, but. She said what really changed and made her a champion was that she focused on her self-care, sleep and nutrition and she said she was sleeping.
I remember it being something crazy like 14 or 16 hours a day. Like she would have a long sleep at night and then she would sleep during the day. And actually that was her performance enhancer. It wasn't that she was running more or doing any different training, she actually just supported her physical body more and she became a champion from that.
And I think that really points to. If these, athletes and people are using stress in a way, but balancing [00:09:00] it with recovery to become champions, then we can do that in our everyday life as well. So, as I said, mostly I see people who have suffered the long-term effects of stress and it starts to impact their performance, their mental health, their metabolism, their energy.
And there is a lot that you can do to, you know, stop stress or challenges in your life, and particularly if you have a lot. That you carried. If there's a lot of decisions that you have to make, um, and there's a lot of people that you have to look after, then there's a lot that you can do to support yourself through a recovery plan to make sure that you are still maintaining peak performance.
Okay? So you're not dropping down into burnout. the way that I look at a recovery planet has to have nutrition, good nutrition in there, and good nutrition doesn't look like, you know, doing fad diets or, you know, cutting out major food groups from your diet or anything like that, right? So normally when I see women, when they're exhausted and stressed, we need to have a very balanced approach to the macros in order to get the right [00:10:00] nutrients in the, to do the repair work.
So looking at nutrition, whole foods, cutting out processed foods and sugars and things like that. They are just gonna create more stress on the body. They are just gonna push you further down. Secondly, sleep. As I mentioned, the runner, she, all she did was increase her sleep and improve her nutrition, and she became a champion just through those.
Okay, so sleep is so important for recovery. So even if you're going through a really busy time or a challenging time and you can feel yourself becoming, you know, run down, then that would be the time to go to bed even earlier. Okay. 8:39 PM It sounds crazy, but if you can, I know it feels like that is way too early and you're missing out on life, but those are the moments that are going to help make your recovery a lot faster.
And the third thing you wanna look at is creating mental space or mental clarity. So stop overthinking things. Stop over, catastrophizing, pause.
The mental noise, the mental chatter. You know, don't overthink every scenario because the busier our nineties. The [00:11:00] more stressed our body is, the more we're in a state of stress, the more we activate the fight or flight re response, right? So we're activating it through our thinking and so the best that you can let go, a lot of the stuff that you carry around that you can't seem to let go at the moment, do the best that you can to let that go because it will help to relax the body and start to allow the body to recover.
sometimes what's really good is to get yourself out of your environment. So if you are someone who is working all day, cognitively, so if you're on the computer and you've got high stake decisions to make, or you're just using your brain all day, which is most people today, then you wanna look at.
Doing something that takes you completely away from that, like going out into nature, going for a walk, like taking the weekend and going for a really long walk or a hike. And that gets you away from all the devices. 'cause that actually helps to, to reset the mind then, okay, so you sitting down and watching Netflix is not going to reset your mind because you're still using your mind, right?
I hope that makes sense. So you wanna make sure that your, your [00:12:00] rest matches your stress. So if you're on the computer all day, you wanna be away from all devices 'cause that's not gonna help you recover. But sometimes just taking yourself out of your environment, breaking your routine, can help to really reset the system.
So I'd love to hear your comments below. If you see the comment box on. You know what is helpful for you to see that stress is not the enemy, that actually we can use stress to help us to grow. And every opportunity or every challenge that we have is just another learning curve. It's another learning curve.
Right? And as frustrating as it is, and I know after a point where I have so many things go wrong, it's like, come on now. But actually when you come through the other end, you realize how much you've learned, but at the same time, you want to make sure that you have a recovery plan, that you are taking care of yourself so you don't burn out.
Let me know your comments below.
