Hey, my friend, what's up? And welcome back to another episode of do life big, and we are ready to rock and roll here today. Today is day one where all three of my children are back in school with a brand-new school year. Cannot even believe it, the summer goes by in a flash. It is so crazy. We got Landon going into seventh grade, Kiersten started fifth and Keegan started kindergarten, and it is just crazy to me. So hopefully they're having a great day. Today, I wanted to talk about tips that we can all apply to our life to relieve stress or reduce stress in our life, because there's no way around it. Stress is going to happen. And I was actually listening to a podcast not too long ago, and there was a doctor on there talking about the correlation between people who lived longer lives versus people who tended not to and their view on stress, those that looked at stress as a really bad thing, as a negative thing, trying to avoid it, making it mean that something was wrong with them or this wasn't normal, did not tend to live as long as people who accepted the fact that stress is normal. And so I think that's really important, even if you're a parent right now and you have children who are getting older and they're in middle school, possibly like mine, where they can tend to say things like, I'm so stressed, or even you might say that yourself, like, I'm so stressed, I'm so stressed, as if it's this bad thing. And I think it's really important that we all understand that stress is normal, and it's learning how to cope and handle your stress that will determine how you can grow through it, so that it won't trip you up and put you down a negative spiral in your life.
So today, I'm going to share with you seven different tips that you can use, starting right now, to relieve stress in your life. We all should have a toolkit of all different kinds of things that we can, you know, reach our hand in and grab out if we're stressed out. And it can be different for everyone, right? You know, and I'm even thinking about last night, you know, my husband and I, we were out to dinner, and we were doing a date night, and my oldest son, Landon, who's 12, he was texting me telling me how stressed out he was. And I've worked with him now for a while on this, but he knows that, you know, he's got the weighted blanket that he can use for a little bit that'll help him out. You know, I told him to put on some meditation music. Told him to really close his eyes and visualize putting everything that he's worried about, like putting each thought on a leaf and watching it float down a river in North Carolina. And he does it, and it works for him. So we all have different things, but it's important that we actually are proactive about it, and we actually handle the stress so we can work through it.
So the first tip I'm going to give you is, whenever you feel yourself stressed, immediately go to your breathing. Your breathing will shift your heart rate, and you don't need to do this long, like a minute and a half, like five to seven deep breaths, like really deep in through the nose, and then breathe out for as long as you can, as if you're blowing into a straw. And the more that you actually exhale, the more you can slow your heart rate down and you will calm yourself. The more that we breathe in, more oxygen, the more that that oxygen is going to be brought to our brain, which then makes us more calm, and it can make us more alert. So breathing, if you can practice this, this will counteract the fight or flight that happens to be taking over when something stressful or anxiety. Provoking happens in your life or to you. So whenever you feel your state change, you know, just number one, just stop for a second and say to yourself, how am I feeling right now? Like, oh my gosh, I'm actually feeling kind of nervous. I'm feeling really anxious. I'm feeling stressed. Right away, go back to your breath, and it's a really great way to start every morning, or even when you're in the shower, deep breaths, five to seven deep breaths into the nose, out through the mouth.
The second tip to help you reduce your stress is to really shift your focus to gratitude. What you focus on grows, and I know we've heard this before, but focusing primarily on what you don't want is only going to bring more of that into your life. It's the law of attraction, right? So you have to change your perspective and ask yourself, how do you want to feel?, and however you want to feel, like if you want to feel calm and you want to feel happy and positive or confident, then you have to focus on feeling that way. So start paying attention to things that you're grateful for, and then you'll start to notice even more things that you're grateful for when you do this. You know, if you're always thinking about what you don't have, what you want, what you desire to have, how your life isn't the way you want it to be, you know that can cause a lot of stress, and it's only going to bring more of what you don't want into your life. So shift your perspective. No matter what you have going on, even if you're in like a world of shit right now, you still woke up and someone else didn't today, you still woke up. You still have this day. You still have your breath; you still have your heart beating. Focus on that.
The third tip is to get outside for a walk. And here's the big deal. Here's the part that's going to be hard without your phone. Like just 10 minutes of getting outside in nature, a walk around your block, a walk through the trails in the woods, whatever, a walk on the beach. It doesn't even matter. Just 10 minutes of doing that is going to lower your cortisol levels. And your cortisol levels, that is your main stress hormone. So we want to counteract that and have less stress this is one of the ways to do it, and it just allows you to really just disconnect from what's stressing you out, and it has also been proven to lower physical and mental health problems just by doing this, just by getting out in nature for 10 minutes a day, you could put that one in your tool kit too. All right.
Number four is to get it out of your head and write it out. Write it out on paper. Everything that's going on in your mind that's circling like a massive negative tornado, stressing you out, out onto the paper, and a lot of times, what you're going to find is that when you actually get it out onto paper, and you actually read it out loud to yourself, you're going to realize that the solution is way easier than you thought it was. But the more that you can talk about what's been bothering you or what's bothered you from the past, even if it was something kind of hard to deal with, right? The more that you can talk about it, the more that you can write about it, it loses its power over you, whereas if you just bury it, and you bury all that negative stuff and all the things that have happened to you deep down, and you never bring it to surface, it's going to have power and control over you forever. So you want to take the power and the control back in your life. You don't want your emotions or pain from the past to have that power and control over you. One of the ways to work through that is to ride it out.
All right, number five is to just start paying attention to how much caffeine you're drinking. You know, caffeine is just going to speed up your heart rate, which is going to cause you to have more stress. And you might want to just kind of take note of when you start to feel stressed out during your day. Does it tend to happen, like, after you've had coffee? Does it tend to happen in the afternoon when you go to have your energy drink? Like, what is it? And you might just want to start to limit it and cut it back a little bit, maybe even make some swaps. Like, not totally go cold turkey, but just reduce it. And maybe make a swap to a different kind of tea, an herbal tea, a green tea, something along that way. I mean, you can go cold turkey if you want. I remember, my God, I would do a 21-day Ultimate Reset. Is what it basically was, which it was basically, in a nutshell, an elimination diet that you followed for three weeks where you gradually removed things from your diet that could be that could cause inflammation. So you'd start out, like the first two days having a little bit of meat, and then you wouldn't have any meat at all for the rest of the 21 days. And then you were allowed to have things like yogurt and oatmeal. And then eventually, at the very end of it, you were basically vegan. And one of the things that you had to wean yourself off that you. Weren't allowed to have with caffeine, and I thought I was going to die when this happened, because I'm a mom all night long. I don't really get good sleep, but I don't work on that, and I would just be tired during the day. And I just remember when I finally did this program and stuck with it, I felt so much better without having any caffeine than I did when I would have like, three cups of coffee a day. I had so much more energy. I had no drops during the day, where I felt like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired. Two o'clock I need a nap. I fell asleep faster. I slept better. I woke up feeling more rested. I had that even keel of energy all day long, and it was amazing. So my point is about caffeine is you don't need it as much as you think you do, and it could be linked to causing you to feel more stressed. So just pay attention to how much you're having, if you're having any at all in your day-to-day life. All right.
Number six is to put on a comedy or a stand-up comedian, something that is going to make you laugh your ass off, because laughing buffers against cortisol, and remember, cortisol is the main stress hormone, so it also releases endorphins when you laugh. And we know Endorphins make us feel good. It's kind of like when you work out, the endorphins are released, and that's why you feel so good. Nobody really wants to work out, but you become addicted to the way that it makes you feel. Those are the endorphins. So if you find yourself feeling too stressed out or you have a lot of anxiety, just pop on your favorite comedy show. Or if you have like a hilarious friend, send them a text or call them and say, I need you to make me laugh for a second. I'm feeling super stressed out, and just getting yourself to laugh a little bit, you'll notice that you will feel so much better. I mean, that's why I try to spend all day long laughing my way through life. It's either that or I'd end up in a ball under a table. So we've got to, we've got to decide here what we want. Do we want to feel good then laugh, if not killed up in a ball underneath the table. We're not going to do that. This is do life big. That's why you're listening to this. You want to grow and be the best version of yourself.
All right, anyways, and the last one is to put on some slow, calming music. Now listen, don't get me wrong, when I'm doing my workouts. I have my earbuds blasting as loud as possible with like, super loud hip hop, rap, whatever. That's going to keep me motivated and get me feeling awesome. But when I'm stressed out, and I'm not really feeling it and I am filled with anxiety, I'm putting on some slow country. I'm putting on some Morgan Wallen, and I'm just letting the tunes calm me down. So put together a few songs for yourself that you can save, that make you feel good, that relax you, that calm you down, so that you can have this as another tool to take out of your tool kit for when you're stressed out. So let's just go over these real quick. We all have our own tool kit that has a bunch of different solutions in it on how to handle stress. Remember, stress is normal. We all go through it. It's okay to be stressed. It's making sure that you are dealing with your stress in a healthy manner. That's what's key. So just to recap, the seven tips to reduce your stress, focus on your breathing. Number two, gratitude. Number three, get outside for a walk for 10 minutes. Number four, get it out of your head and write it down. Number five, less caffeine. Number six, get that comedy show on. And number seven, listen to some slow music.
So I hope that this helped you. I would love to hear if you have any other additional suggestions of what you use when you become stressed, because I always like to add as many different solutions to my toolkit to help me out when I'm stressed out as well, too. So thank you so much for listening today. You know I love you. I think you're awesome, and I will see you the next time. Bye.
