Archive for April, 2010

Do you know what stress is? Where it comes from? How it manifests? If everyone experiences stress the same way?

One thing is certain—stress affects our attitudes and can certainly affect our overall health and well being. How we perceive a situation causes us to have an emotional reaction to it. Many people look at the outside event as the real cause of stress, when the experience of stress is actually occurring on the inside. Common responses to stress can often be tension, anxiety, anger, and frustration. These responses can then throw off our mental and physical self, pushing us—and keeping us—out of balance.

Two people in identical circumstances may respond to stressful situations or negative triggers in totally different ways. One may react outwardly, while another may withdraw and get tired. Many experts agree that 75 percent (or more!) of the unhealthy habit of continued, excessive overeating is caused by emotional stress. This means many of us are using food to cope with our feelings, blocking our emotions in an attempt to feel better when triggered by something negative.

There are many methods for helping people reduce stress and create emotional balance to march towards positive patterns and behaviors that reinforce overall health. I attribute my success in helping clients alter unhealthy patterns by teaching them emotional management skills. My clients learn how to effectively change their responses to almost any stressful situation or negative trigger. Once my clients learn how to achieve a relaxed state and maintain that relaxation, change work becomes more comfortable, empowering, and effective.

You’ve got the power to change the negative to positive. You can minimize the impact a potentially stressful situation has on your well being. You can achieve the peace of mind you’ve always dreamed of having.

The subconscious, or, your unconscious mind, loves patterns and repetition. What’s familiar to your mind resonates instantly. When it’s a positive pattern, great! You can achieve many, many things. But, when it’s a negative pattern or thought that’s repeated over time, then you become your own worst enemy and it’s harder to meet challenges, to excel, to achieve.

Modern research has discovered that our emotional states are produced by a couple of things like how we hold our bodies (our physiology) and the mental pictures we focus on. Did you know that we have approximately 44,000 to 66,000 mental pictures or thoughts a day? That’s a lot of content to experience, process and react to.

The one primary way we can change our emotional states is to change our physiology or how we are holding our body. Exactly how we are holding our bodies can trigger every emotion that we have ever experienced—how you carry yourself throughout the day has the potential to trigger feelings like being sad, mad, happy, or confident. As soon as we train our body to be in the physiology we want, we can instantly feel the corresponding emotion!

My Mental Toughness and Success Moment CDs are each designed specifically to help you get into and stay in the physiology and emotional state you want each and every day. My CDs are designed with specific suggestions and imageries that teach you to develop a mental toughness and with repetition (or, as I like to say, repeatedness). Take control your states of mind—positively and effectively!

Is it really possible to change how we think? There are so many self-help books out there telling us we can alter our thoughts to change our brains. I have many friends and clients that buy and read every self-help book there is but they still can’t seem to change their lives. They have done everything and yet nothing seems to work to undo years of negative thought patterns.

Many of you know that I have dedicated my life to finding ways to solve the problem of anxiety and depression. In the ’60s and ‘70s there wasn’t much help for these symptoms and often doctors thought you were crazy if you exhibited symptoms of anxiety. I was personally treated terribly by friends, family, doctors, teachers and therapists who all thought they were helping. As I look back on it, my condition was not really understood, so everyone thought I was making it up. I hear it in my office today from many clients who have family and spouses that think they are making it up, that panic and anxiety are not real. But, these are real conditions with real symptoms that stop people from having full and rich lives.

So, can you change the way you think? Can you really change automatic negative thoughts?

Understanding more about your brain/body connection can be helpful. You are born with a fight or flight mechanism that allow us to protect ourselves in dangerous situations. When a person senses danger, the body prepares itself to either fight (defend itself) or flee (run away from the situation). The body’s fight or flight mechanism causes the heart rate to increase, the eyes to dilate, and the body to prepare itself for a dangerous situation. Even though these effects are intended to be a good thing, sometimes the body misunderstands a situation and believes that there is danger when in reality there is not (e.g., taking a test, giving a speech, meeting someone for the first time).

The part of the brain that triggers fight or flight is called the amygdala. The amygdala is trained to remember the thing or event that triggered the fight or flight mechanism (the test or speech). This part of your brain is keeping track of all things that might cue danger. You can see how this can cause much unnecessary anxiety. The brain has to be retrained to stop reacting in flight or flight to something that is not actually dangerous.

Part of successful retraining includes using guided imagery, hypnosis, NLP, HNRI, Brainspotting or EMDR. Finding a personal development coach that is trained in the some or all of these therapies is critical to success, too.

Change the way you think to positively affect your life!

There are mounting statistics on how stress has detrimental effects on the body, mind, emotions and health. The American Institute of Stress notes that 75 to 90% of doctor visits are for stress-related complaints. A Harvard study shows that people who live in a state of high anxiety are 4.5 times more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death than non-anxious individuals. And, consider this: in 2002 people in the United States alone purchased nearly $17.2 billion dollars worth of anti depressants and anti-anxiety drugs, up more than 10% from 2001. What do you think this will amount to in 2010?

In 2002, Americans also spent $1.1 billion on prescription sleeping pills. Seven of the top ten best selling drugs are for stress-related ailments. However, this is not just an American problem. Developed nations across the globe report higher levels of stress, anger, anxiety and dissatisfaction.

Something’s gotta give.

We are constantly “on”—email, internet, cell phone, television—there is endless noise in our lives. And more and more we are experiencing the stress of others. Their energies, reactions and words. We are all get bombarded by too much information, too much chatter, too much negative energy from the busy world around us.

In my office, people will tell me they actually need their stress to get things done. It’s almost become normal to some people to think stress is a good thing. My advice and reframing of that thinking is wouldn’t it be better to have motivation, drive or power—instead of stress—pushing us forward? Remember, too much stress quickly transforms to overwhelm. Energy, clarity and creativity decline. More aches, pains, restless nights and here come the ants (automatic negative thoughts) abound. Stress truly robs us of our enjoyment and our vitality.

Symptoms of stress can include:
• irritability
• lack of humor
• worry
• excessiveness
• forgetfulness
• aches and pains
• anxiety
• fatigue
• illness
• and so much more..

In understanding stress, consider for a moment that stress is not really about the external things, like the boss, the wife, the job, the sport, the performance, the big win. It’s how you perceive (or filter) any situation and how you respond with your emotions that truly causes symptoms of stress.

Many of us reach a point in our lives when we have a negative experience. Many, too, experience emotional ups and downs. Negative energy builds up as it has nowhere to go. Our anxiety, anger, frustration, blame, can all build up inside us until we either blow up, hide under our covers, have a panic attack, or worse.

But, there really is hope! New research and modalities in therapy can help us all to have more calm and inner peace. At even the most sensitive and volatile point in life, I truly help my clients reverse the negative thought patterns. By working together, even the very, very stressed out can learn how to consistently change their reactions to almost anything life throws at them.

Curious about what awaits you? Try my CDs—Stay Calm, Stay Confident, Stay Connected—to learn more about how to manage stress this spring.