Stress Management for More Happiness

“How am I? I’m great, thanks for asking. I’m being busy, busy, busy. You know, it’s so crazy these days. There’s so many things on the go, work is busy, the family life, and keeping up this time of year. There’s just a million things going. It’s go, go, go all the time. And you know, I can’t remember the last time I had a really good night’s sleep. I could sure use one. Hey, how about you? How are you doing? Well, the same, you’re really busy too, you got a million things. Well, you’ve been killing it man. You’re doing so well in your career, and people love you, and you’re so busy in the community. It’s amazing what you’re doing, like wow. We kind of do this mutual patting each other on the back, and saying, ‘You’re so awesome for being so busy.’ It’s insane. We’re all on the edge of burning out. It’s crazy.”

“By contrast, would you value equally what I have to say if I looked like I was somebody who had all the time in the world to just take it slow? Would you value me as much then? No, probably not. We know from studies that you overvalue, we all overvalue pace, stressful jobs, the accomplishment of things, acquisition of stuff, and this go-go-go mentality, which is part of the Western individualized culture. And frankly, we’ve exported it around the world where it’s about doing, doing, doing, doing, and always living with anxiety and this kind of existential threat, and this living on the edge of burnout. Well, this video is all about getting away from that edge, stepping back, managing stress, and being happy. So, stay tuned.”

“As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. So why is it that we value stressful, high pace activity like it was some badge of honor? Where we esteem people who are doing stuff that crazily busy, crazily living on edge. And it’s crazy what we do. You know, we eat sugar, and we drink caffeinated drinks, and we do all these things to keep ourselves going at this heavy, heavy pace in our society. And the truth is, the pace is killing us. Sometimes as fast as the instant heart attack, and other times, it’s killing us slowly. We’re prone to illness, our immune system gets worse when we’re chronically stressed. And in fact, the evidence shows that our cellular aging speeds up. We’re actually getting older faster as a result of our stress. So physically, we’re going downhill.”

“And mentally, we can show that it’s not good for us either. Chronic stress causes a decline in cognitive function where basically our productivity and effectiveness eventually goes down, and down, and down. And then ultimately, we all know what it’s like when our relationships are in the midst of high stress. We become less emotionally regulated, we’re more volatile, we’re impatient, and sadly, we’re less empathetic. So all of these things, physically, mentally, and emotionally, they go downhill when there’s a ton of chronic stress. So why do we value this incredibly stressful life? Well, it’s actually some pretty good reasons. And one of the leading researchers, a woman named Dr. Emma Seppala, talks about this. And she basically shows that there’s a lot of benefits to having stressed-out times in our lives.”

“Imagine that there’s a mugger pursuing you down some dark street. Well, the stress levels go up, and blood flows to our extremities, and we either run like hell or fight like hell. And it’s a good thing. And we can use that same stress benefit when we’re in sometimes work projects. But there’s a tough deadline, and demanding work, and the stress of it actually brings up our focus, and increases our productivity and our tension. And we start playing our game as good as it can get. And so that’s all great. Stress, under those circumstances, is fantastic. The problem is the lack of relief. When we think that there’s a mugger around every corner, work has a constant, steady, steady, steady set of deadlines and high demanding expectations. And our family, social life, and our parenting, and taking care of our parents, all that stuff can be too much, too constant. And as a biological organism, it’s frankly unsustainable.”

“If you think back to our evolutionary periods, our natural rhythms would have been much more downtime. That would be the vast majority of the day. And our stresses would be brief bursts of stress. We need it now, we’re gonna go run away from the animal or catch the prey that we want to eat for dinner tonight. And we get our rise of external stressful motivation to deal with what’s in front of us. And then, for most of the day, 20 out of 24 hours at least, it’d be chill, relaxed, perfect. That’s the way our biology is meant to be. So just how do we come back from this constant edge of burnout, in high stress? And how do we do it in reality? I don’t think you want me in this video to say, ‘Oh, let’s reconstruct your life so you have this perfect work-life balance and everything’s in harmony.’ I maybe make a video about work-life balance and the degree to which that’s difficult, but worth pursuing in a separate video. But that’s not what this video is about. It’s not changing your reality, it’s about coping with your reality. Building some tools of resilience so that you can come back from that high-stress environment that you’re in, to constantly and find genuine relaxation. And I’m gonna share with you today a number of proven strategies. The science backs it up, it’s stuff that makes you better and able to cope with the high stress environments that you live in.”

So, number one, it’s learn to meditate, and I have three previous videos, a little video series, previously on meditation. So there’ll be a link in the description below, so you can go find out about meditation. The second proven strategy is crazy simple, so you might dismiss it too readily just because it’s simple, but it’s learning to breathe. I know that sounds crazy, but when we breathe truly deeply, inhaling all the way into our diaphragms, and we exhale slowly, then we can actually get some true relaxation.

So, it’s breathing deeply, filling our whole diaphragm, and exhaling slowly. And it’s ridiculously simple, but you can do this trick, this proven strategy for reducing stress, for changing our actual physiology anywhere, anytime. You can be in a busy boardroom with a whole bunch of high-pressure discussions going on, and breathe deeply, exhaling slowly. You could be sitting at home watching TV, you could be going for a walk, you could be sitting down for dinner. This breathing stuff, it’s easy, no one needs to know what you’re doing. Just being conscious, I breathe deeply, I exhale slowly, and it’s precognitive. It, that is, it changes your physiology before you can think about it.

You might be skeptical right now and say, “Oh, that wouldn’t work for me because I’ve got so much going on in my mind.” But if you just do the exercise, breathe deeply, deeply into the diaphragm, and exhale slowly, it will change your physiology, whether you believe it or not, whether your mind’s against it, doing so or not. And the way to get there readily is to practice a breathing exercise, I don’t know, every day for five minutes. And the reason why the practice is important is because once we start attuning our bodies to this kind of breathing, it’ll take fewer and fewer of these kinds of breaths to remind the body that this is a cue to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system and become relaxed. So, if you practice every day for five minutes, breathing deeply, exhaling slowly, you’ll find that you can get very quickly to a relaxed state with just one or two breaths when you most need it.

Okay, here’s a third proven strategy, and it’s related to the last one because it’s about breath. Cardiovascular exercise, vigorous exercise that gets us breathing deeply, is powerfully good for our nervous system. And it works in two ways, though. The one, it’s kind of obvious, that the immediate after effect of exercising is to be relaxed. It’s because we breathe deeply, using a hundred percent of our lungs, breathing deeply, exhaling, using our lungs, and it’s that capacity for the lung to breathe deeply, in a note, that leads to some immediate relief from stress during and immediately following exercise. But in addition, people who have good cardiovascular fitness breathe more deeply and use more of their lung capacity. And because they’re getting more lung capacity being used with every breath, they also tend to breathe fewer times per minute, so they’re breathing slower.

So, cardiovascular exercise has this very big, oversized benefit for being relaxed. In fact, people who have good cardiovascular fitness systems can go through tons and tons of chronic stress and cope pretty well. I’m not recommending it, but cope pretty well, simply because they have this reservoir of breath memory for bringing relaxation. So, a fourth very practical, proven tip for relieving the stress of life quickly is, ironically, to go slow. By going slow, in whatever deliberate way we might want to do it, and there’s many creative ways you could come up with, we actually just attune ourselves to a different pace, and it kind of forces our mind and body to get in sync. So, when we move our body into something slow, and take our mind with it, it’s very, very good for our parasympathetic nervous system.

So, for example, going for a very, very slow walk in nature, being calm, breathing the air, taking things in, is a beautiful way to calm down. Yin yoga might be a perfect example there. Sometimes you might go to the gym and do power yoga, and hot buns, you’ll get all these kinds of very vigorous yoga. But yin yoga is all about protracted postures that are stretching our muscles and our fascia system, or fascia system. So, when we go slow in yin yoga, we calm our bodies down. And the bonus of almost every yoga technique is that they’re always teaching slow, controlled breathing. So, you get some of the earlier bonuses in that one. So, going slow…

And finally, my last for you, this may sound too simple, is find the arms of someone that you love and get a big, big warm hug. Friends, family, your lover, be in their company, enjoy them, pull them close, and hold them for a period of time. Cuddle on the couch, whatever it is, to bring that human connection in a deeply physical way is profoundly helpful for our nervous system. And it’s largely because it hugs produce in us oxytocin. It’s the hormone in our bodies that we sometimes call the love drug. It’s calming, it’s tranquil, it makes us feel warm and good inside, it reduces cravings, it helps us sleep. This kind of way of getting a calm innocent inner system is beneficial in so many ways. And of course, it enhances our social relationships. But keep in mind that your cat or your dog are also very lovely mammals that share that oxytocin hormone just like we do. So, when you’re petting and hanging, you know, with your cat and cuddling with your dog, you’re sharing an oxytocin blast for both of you. Equally good as hugging a human.

So, there you go, five strategies. So, in summary, they were meditating, breathing slowly, deeply, exhaling slowly, getting some good cardiovascular exercise on a routine basis, going slow, and hug the people that you love. All those things are profound ways to change our physiology and to take this major step back from the high paced stress that we have in our lives. And if we aren’t doing some of these things every day, well, we’re living a life that’s destined to have burnout, unhappiness, fatigue, exhaustion, and all those terrible things. So instead, embrace these things I’ve just taught, and be happier, get a little bit more balance in your life.

Now, every week, I try to give some kind of little, you know, free, additional thing away that kind of reinforces what the video was all about. And this week, I want to offer one of the chapters from my best-selling book that was all about love and how we bring that beautiful oxytocin hormone more into our lives. So, at the link below, you can download that chapter of my book. Thank you so much for watching.

If you liked the video, share it, and other people get to see it too. And if you like this kind of content, please subscribe to my channel, and you’ll get a new video every Sunday morning. I’m Paul Charisma, I’m your happiness expert. Thanks for watching.