Life Without Stress-Management Is Possible

Life Without Stress-Management is possible. All that we actually need is to understand what stress actually is. It's like all other feelings; an indication of our state of mind at the moment. Nothing else and nowhere else to look. What a relief! Join me as I explore this topic from a new perspective.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast, A time to feel calm and think clearly. I'm Claire Downham, The Queen of Calm, A Transformational Life Coach. I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying, And I want to prevent you from having to do the same. The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state, Which is calm and clarity. Just listen like you would listen to music, With an open mind and curiosity. There's nothing else to do. Now let's relax into today's episode. So today, Life without stress management. Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing for everyone, Really? If we didn't need to do any more stress management, I'm afraid a few people would be out of a job because there's a lot of people very helpfully teaching stress management. So I think it's probably good to just recap, If you haven't heard this before, My journey with stress management or managing my feelings. But for a lot of people, That's stress at the moment, Isn't it? People feeling stressed. I was on a meeting yesterday or the day before, And I think pretty much everybody in the room expressed that they were feeling stressed or had been at some point in the not too distant past. And most of them shared with us with some kind of stress management technique that they were using, Something that they thought was managing that stress for them. So as you know, If you've been listening to me for a while, That I've burned out in 2015, Clearly wasn't doing any well. I was doing quite a bit of stress management, Actually, In the run-ups of the burnout. So I was doing a lot of, I was trying to meditate and do things like that. I'd already started to look into a bit of self-development even in the run-ups of the burnout, Before my big self-development binge, Which was after burnout. But I also, I was trying to manage my sleep. That was one of the things I was doing a lot of, A lot of trying to manage my sleep, Trying to get more sleep, Trying to sleep more consistently towards the end, Just before I kind of left work. I was about three to five hours a night, So it was pretty ropy with my sleep by then. And then after I burnt out, I got really into, I guess it was kind of like a stress management thing, I got really into maintaining myself at an okay place so that I didn't end up stressed again, Because obviously I'd had a pretty epic crash out of life for a year, Which I didn't really want to do again, Understandably. But I was really into all sorts of things. And I had a little workshop that I used to deliver, It was called Stress to Success Habits. And it shared with people all the little things that I did every single day to maintain my wellbeing, To manage stress that I didn't even get to the point where I was managing it in the moment, Really, Because I was already like making sure that I didn't have any inappropriate feelings like stress or anxiety or anything else. I was meditating, Doing affirmations and gratitude, As you've heard all this before, And no doubt you've done some of it too. And I don't do anything to manage my feelings state. Like when I say that to people, They look at me like I'm a crazy person with two heads. They do look bemused by this idea of going through life, Not really being bothered about my feelings. Like, Literally not caring, I don't really care how I feel. And that's what's been really interesting. I won't speak much about this, Probably speak about it another time. But even in terms of how I feel physically, Used to really draw me into a bit of a, Oh, What have I eaten and what have I done and what do I need to do differently and what should I not drink today or what should I eat today or all of that in order to kind of make sure that I didn't feel off at all. And I'm really not, You know, If I'm really poorly, Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about it, But I'm not so bothered about the kind of day to day feeling okay or not feeling okay. But in terms of my emotional state, I lose my you know what, Quite often, Yesterday morning, While I don't know if anybody noticed on yesterday's session, That the end of the session, My face was a bit and I probably paused a bit and there was some noise because my fiance decided to knock on the bedroom door because I'm now in the bedroom. It's a little bit warmer than downstairs and whisper things because he didn't think, He thought I had finished, Lost my you know what with him big time because I'd already told him that I would come and tell him I was finished and he could know when he could make a noise. So that was fun. But I what I notice now is because I don't get so involved in the fact that I've got angry, And add a little bit of a shout, It passes really quickly because I'm not inside me thinking about me and how I'm doing and oh, Am I awful and I feel guilty and blah blah blah. I'm just like, Oh, Right. I didn't quite notice in the moment that my feeling state of anger was letting me know I had angry thinking. So it all came out of my mouth. But I'm human and that's OK. It's OK to sometimes lose our you know what with our other half and our kids and whatever. It's just part of being human and it's OK. And so because I don't try to manage it afterwards or during it, It passes really quickly because this is the issue with all the stress management techniques is that you're managing something that doesn't need managing because it was it was it was like it's leaving. It's leaving. It's leaving. That's what our feelings and our thoughts do. They pass through us and not who we are. And we get in the way. So life without stress management is great because there's there's just a lot less. There's just a lot less to do. Now, I'm not just saying stop all your stress management techniques, Folks. That's not what I'm saying. If you've got some things that you think are keeping you just about sane at the moment and just about not crashing and burning like I did, Then that's that's cool. But when we enter into this conversation, This this inside out conversation, You start to those things start to naturally fall away. So I didn't go from doing everything to not doing anything like overnight. It happened gradually. I had my first kind of coaching around this understanding in January 2020. And by about I think it was the summer I could probably check my gratitude journal to see when I did it last. But I remember first affirmations when because I just decided they were utter nonsense. I mean, They really. Does anybody else find that they just feel really icky because you like saying something isn't true? It's a bit of you going. Yeah. Anyway, Pointless. So that was the first thing to go. And then I think the gratitude journal went next. And I just I remember Bruce and I used to sit on the sofa doing it. I just sit there. I've seen that one night. Why are we doing this? Exactly. Like, Why? Why are we doing this? We we kind of have to shoe on in and make sure we did it. And oh, I forgot to go back to your journals. It was just it was just the shoe warning thing. So we just stopped. Literally, We just stopped. We were not doing this anymore. We just had to do it. And then meditation fell away not long after that, I think. So it was a gradual process. And it came from a place of understanding and seeing that my feelings, Your feelings, Everybody's feelings, Whether it's stress or anything else, It is your system. Just letting you know that that you're about your state of mind in the moment and that state of mind in the moment, In the moment is really important. It's not letting you know that you're a stress head or there's something wrong with you. Or it's just letting you know that in that moment you have got caught up in some thinking. And that thinking is is kidding your body. I suppose is the best way to put it is kidding your body that there's some danger because it's thinking that feels like because your boss is going to shower you because you've not done something or you're behind with something for a client. Or whatever it is. Or it feels like there's too much to do. It's the thinking about that, Not not the things themselves. And so when we feel riled up in any way, Whether it's anger or stress or anxiety or whatever, That that's just your human dashboard. And the issue with all the stress management, Squashing feelings down, Getting rid of them, Tapping them out, Whatever we do to get rid of our feelings is that that is literally like switching off your human dashboard or covering it over. I often say it's like taking a piece of cardboard, Putting it over the dashboard of your car and then driving around. And that would not end well for anybody. You would get a speeding fine at least one during the first day. You would you would eventually run out of fuel. You'd run out of oil. You would become a bit like a burnt out person, A bit like, You know, Your car just wouldn't work anymore. And that's the issue is that how else do we know whether or not our thinking is trustworthy? Now, The thing there is that you might think, Oh, Your thinking is trustworthy. It's not a good starting point now because it isn't. You may maybe have some awareness that there's a lot of utter nonsense going on. It's not even your utter nonsense. It's just your inherited stuff that you've picked up as you've gone through life. But you know, When you're really riled up, You are getting a warning from your system to let you know about your state of mind. And if you squash that down and you suppress it, You try and switch off. You're not in touch with yourself as much as you might think you are. It's been, I've made so many different decisions from that place of understanding rather than, You know, Trying to manage the feeling to go, Oh, Hello. I'm a bit off at the moment. I don't always spot it. Sometimes I shout my laugh. I guess I don't always spot it at the moment. But I do spot it very quickly afterwards. And I'm also very compassionate to myself that sometimes we all lose it and it's fine. And it passes as soon as I stop thinking like that. As soon as I hugged Bruce and said sorry, It all went away. So there is life without stress management. This is a possibility for everyone. And this conversation is the most freedom freeing thing that you can experience. And if you want to live a life without stress management, Tools and techniques and to it used to take me so much time as well. Like, Oh, My goodness. So much time. And. Yeah, This is a place to it's a place to explore. Lots of love today. Thank you so much for listening. There's nothing to do now, But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life. Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm. This has been the Calmcast with Claire Downer, Queen of Calm. Take care and keep listening.