Heidi Rae Coaching - Acknowledging Stressors

Beauties!

How many of you find yourself being scared of what stresses you out? How many of you just want to pretend like you aren't stressed... "I've never been better," or, "Fake it 'til you make it," or "It's all good!" (I'm raising my hand WITH you!)

Surprise! This is not healthy. We obviously don't want to just wallow in our stressors. We want to acknowledge our stress, define it, tune into it, and do something about it. There are so many ways to do this. When I was learning about mindful meditation while at IMC, healing from my stroke, there was a guided meditation that I loved!

The basic idea was to envision your stressor. For this example, let's say that work is our stressor. I would envision a large sign that said, "WORK." I would imagine that I was sitting at the head of a dinner table. I acknowledged everyone at my table. WORK was there, too. I would then envision myself saying something like, "Hello, WORK. I see you sitting there. I see that you've brought quite a bit of baggage that you've put onto my table. WORK, you are welcome to be here. However, I am no longer going to allow you to take up space that you aren't paying rent for. You can sit there, but you're going to need to take all of that heavy baggage off of my table. I will no longer allow you to take up all of that space." Guided meditation takes practice, and it takes repetition.

I also love this idea:

We are still using the example of work being our stressor.

USE your commute time to acknowledge that work is a stressor, validate your feelings, and flip the switch.

1. Recall: Think of one thing during your work day that made you smile, or that went well. (I do this exercise out loud - yes, I totally talk to myself whilst in the car!)

2. Reflect: Think about YOUR choices during the work day. What choices made it a good day, or a not-so-good day.

3. Consider: (Remember the "Next Time, I will..." exercise?) Consider what you can do differently in the future if a similar thing takes place. Can you disengage with someone? Can you wake up 15 minutes earlier to ensure you are on time? Can you get up and move your body each hour? Can you keep a notebook to write down hard things that are happening during your time, then schedule a venting 15 minutes each day to go over what you wrote down in the notebook?

Exercises like these validate your feelings of stress. These are not going to eliminate stress from your life. Stress is part of life. However, we can work with it rather than pushing it aside and letting it build.

XOXOXO