[00:00:00] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna and today we're going to talk about how to deal with stress without feeling overwhelmed. Now a big part of exhaustion, anxiety, stress, burnout, things that are barriers to high performance has to do with overthinking. So overthinking leads to overwhelm.

[00:00:20] It's not how much we have on during the day. So you will think of days when You've had a lot on and you get through it and it feels pretty easy. And then other days you have a lot on and you just feel completely overwhelmed.

[00:00:33] So having too much on our mind over thinking leads to anxiety, it leads to overwhelm stress, low moods, and burnout. So it's a really big trigger for burnouts. This long term overthinking with a mind is so overloaded with mental stress for too long,

[00:00:52] this mental stress or hypervigilant thinking activates or triggers the stress response. It activates a fight or flight response and releases stress hormones in the body. So if you, Look at how mental stress actually has a downstream effect on our, you know, hormones, on our systems, on our energy, on our mood, on our performance.

[00:01:14] So, if we look at our sleep, on so many factors, on our weight, even, then you will really see that this part, if we can get a handle on this part, it will make a huge difference to the way that we look and the way that we feel.

[00:01:25] So we're not talking about overthinking. I'm talking about more the negative stuff, the thing that's creating tension and worry and concern. If we overanalyze the situation, if we catastrophize the situation, that kind of thinking creates a lot of stress on the system. Now research has found that up to three minutes of negative thinking starts to change the biochemistry in our brain, releases stress hormone.

[00:01:54] It floods the body with glucose, which then floods the body with insulin. And it also activates [00:02:00] silent genes and it moves us out of the rest and relaxation response. So that's just three minutes. of negative thinking. So like I said, like worry, concern, things like that. But they've also found that, you know, the opposite is true.

[00:02:14] So positive calming, happy thoughts will also induce healing hormones and reverse the damage of negative thinking. So It's important to see this that it highlights the fact that yes, our negative thinking is making an impact to our physiology on a biochemical level and having a more clear mind, having clarity and more happy and I guess kind of content and peaceful thinking is going to help us be at our best.

[00:02:41] when we're stressed, our body is flooded with stress hormone cortisol, which Literally drops our IQ and it gives us tunnel vision. So we are, we zone in on a problem, we become hypervigilant, we can't let it go. And we don't allow for a bigger perspective.

[00:03:00] So it's very difficult to resolve our issues or find solutions to our challenges. When we have such tunnel vision, it's almost like. Reading a book with your nose pressed up the page, you can only see a few words rather than the whole story. And this is the same thing which happens in our mind.

[00:03:16] We get very myopic with our thinking, our judgement is impaired. It is not the best time to make a decision because we are irrational when we have too much cortisol being released.

[00:03:27] So how do we deal with our stress and challenges and situations that happen in our life? Because life is never without challenges. How do we deal with that? Without feeling so overwhelmed and stressed and drained by everything that's happening and how can we do things with a lot more ease and navigate our life more easily without that dread and that worry.

[00:03:47] And the first thing that I like to take my clients through is really understanding how the mind works. I have found that strategies alone are not really life changing for my clients anyway, [00:04:00] until they really see how the mind works. Like what's really happening in the mind, in the body. That's creating the symptoms in the way that they feel and the way that they see the world as well and making everything worse.

[00:04:11] So number one, thinking creates overwhelm. It creates anxiety and it creates stress and it's not about the situation. So when we have too much on our mind, our mind is like overloaded and it's almost like when you, if you were to jump in your car and drive down the road and put your car, your foot on the accelerator and drive it into the red zone.

[00:04:34] For the next, you know, three hours, right? Your car, your engine will get close to engine failure because the car is not designed to drive in that red zone for long periods of time, right? This is the same with the mind. And what we don't understand is that. when we have a lots of thinking in our mind and it creates all of these uneasy feelings, those symptoms, the anxiety, the tension, the worry, the fear, all of those feelings that just horrible, yucky feelings that we feel is actually your body.

[00:05:06] Letting you know that your mind is in overdrive, that there is too much on your mind, there is too much thinking, and it's the best way that the body can get your attention to say, Hey, you got to slow it down.

[00:05:18] So those symptoms are not coming from our to do list or the situation at hand. What it's coming from is our body telling us, Hey, you're in the red zone. Okay. And while we use a lot of this over analytical thinking and worry and concern because we really feel like it helps us to offset or mitigate any further stress down the road.

[00:05:39] What it really does, it revs up our system and it prevents clarity and we really are not in the best place to make a decision or to resolve issues.

[00:05:47] Over time, when we have so much overthinking, like if it becomes chronic, eventually it becomes habitual. And that's who we are. So if we are accustomed to operating in this place where we've always got a lot on our mind. We're always worried about every scenario. [00:06:00] It starts to change our biochemistry in our brain, and so we get a fluctuation in our neurotransmitters, which means we are more prone to anxiety and stress and overwhelm, because we don't have those nutrients or those neurotransmitters.

[00:06:12] To keep the brain and the body balanced and calm and rational and feeling like everything's going to be okay. So number one was really recognizing that your overthinking is creating the symptoms that you're feeling that you, you know, you really want to escape from. It's making the scenario feel more serious and more dread and more concern and more, I guess, you know, catastrophized when really it's a symptom that your body is giving you to say, Hey, you're in the red zone. You need to slow down. Okay. You need to pull back from your thinking as best that you can get out of your head. And from a clear state of mind, you'll be able to resolve what's in front of you.

[00:06:52] The second step is to escape the thought traps. You will have common triggers that you get stuck in, that you catastrophize, that kind of sets you off. And for everybody it's different, but there will be certain things that you find that are harder for you to let go. Now, a clean mind. We don't do very well with adding more on our mind, with adding more to our plate in terms of mental stress.

[00:07:18] So I once had a client who was very successful in her career. This is just to give you an example. She had a business. She was very successful. She had been in business for about 20, 30 years. So she really knew how to do business. we were chatting one day and she was really worried. She was really concerned and catastrophizing because, you know, Her business was going through a cash flow issue and she thought, well, what if I can't pay my staff?

[00:07:39] And so in her mind, she had really blown this up. And I asked her, I said, have you ever been in business before? You had this issue where you couldn't, pay stuff. Like, and how did you overcome it? She was like, yeah, actually I did right in the beginning. And I actually had to get money out of an ATM to pay my staff.

[00:07:55] You know, it was, it was so much worse. Right. And then she relaxed because [00:08:00] she could see that she had been in this situation before. And she knew she was able to get out of it before, she'll find a way to get out of it now. And so the biggest thing that keeps us stuck in these thought traps is that we don't see the solution.

[00:08:15] And so I always say to my clients, have you been in this scenario before? And how many times have you overcome this scenario, right? Maybe not the exact same scenario, but something very similar. And if not, Do you recognize that you are very resourceful in everything that you've overcome in your life up until this point?

[00:08:32] That you can be quite confident that you will know what to do at the time. And so that allows the mind to rest knowing that actually I can put my trust in something. My trust is that I will know how to deal with it when that moment arrives that I have to deal with it. So quite often our thought traps are planning for something in the future, which obviously most likely never occurs.

[00:08:56] And number three, be okay with, with bad feelings, with feeling bad. So one of the biggest things that we do is that we go to, we kind of resist the feelings of, don't feel easy about this, you know, there's something stressful potentially over the next week. Or I've got a financial issue, or I've got a relationship issue, or something with my kids, or whatever it is.

[00:09:18] And that place of being in those emotions of anxiety and fear and worry, they don't feel good. And when we kind of resist them, or go to war with those symptoms, and again, those symptoms, are really just there to tell us, Hey, we're overthinking. Okay. That's not about what's actually going to happen. Now that's not predicting how bad our situation is going to be.

[00:09:39] It's really a direct communication or a direct link to where your thinking is at. So that's what those symptoms are. It doesn't make sense to try to go to war with them, right? To resist them, to try to fix them, to get rid of them. Because all that does is it makes it persist. Just to share an example, when I go traveling or if I'm, I'm [00:10:00] terrible in the heat and I need to stop saying that I'm terrible in the heat, but I'm not, I'm not in the past being very good in the heat.

[00:10:06] And sometimes when I go traveling, like last year, I went to Europe and it was really hot and you know, I would find myself walking around in the heat. saying, Oh, it's so hot. It's so hot. It's so hot. It's so hot. And it's, I don't know why I do it. I feel like there's a part of me that does it because I think somehow that's going to cool me down cause I'm trying to accept it by saying it to myself so much.

[00:10:26] And all it does is it makes me hotter, right? To the point where I'm super sweaty and it's embarrassing. that situation for me is me trying to resist The heat that I was feeling, me trying to resist how hot my body was getting and it was on my mind, on my mind, and all I did was overheat my body.

[00:10:46] All I did was activate the stress hormones in the body to increase my body temperature, increase perspiration, and do the exact opposite of what I actually wanted. So when we resist our symptoms. They persist, And so if we can be okay with feeling bad, because you have to remind yourself, how many times have you felt bad and you have overcome them, right?

[00:11:07] And if you're listening to this a hundred percent of the time, don't go to war with your feelings. They will pass as soon as your thinking settles. And from that place of clarity, you'll be able to really work through your challenges with a clear mind and really tap into your inner resources. So these are the three things that I.

[00:11:25] focus on to really increase your understanding of how the mind works. Number one, overthinking creates overwhelm. The symptoms that we experience are our bodies, Just kind of tap on the shoulder, say, Hey, you're in the red zone. There's too much going on in your mind. It's not about what's happening in your life.

[00:11:41] Number two is to escape the thought traps. Look at thought traps that you have, that you catastrophize things, that the thoughts or the situations that you can't let go, right? And really see how in different scenarios, how you've handled yourself differently, and how you can overcome this situation as well.

[00:11:58] And number three. [00:12:00] Be okay with bad feelings. Okay? They pass, they've all passed and you will be okay even with where you're at right now.

[00:12:06] leave a comment below and let me know what you think and what really stood out for you and maybe even what is the thought trap that you get stuck in. Let me know in the comments below. 

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