The Mindset Mentor - Practice These Techniques To Relieve Daily Stress

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive free text messages from me to help motivate, inspire you, some mindset tips. Text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about eight different techniques to help you easily remove stress from your life. We all know that it seems like since 2020, things have gotten more and more and more and more stressful. And I don't know if you guys are the same as me. It just seems to build up. And what I needed was tools in my tool belt that when I feel like there's stress coming up, when I feel like there's

Starting point is 00:00:54 anxiety coming up, because I have stress and anxiety just like other people do. But what I want to have is I want to have tools in my tool belt so that when it happens, I can pull out a tool and say, hey, does this help with my stress and anxiety? Hey, does this help with my stress and anxiety? Because I don't want to let it overtake me or anything like that. I want to be the one that's in charge. And so let me go through the eight tips with you, the eight techniques with you. The first one, which you've been listening to this podcast for all you know, is breathing. The very first thing to shift in your body, whether you're excited, whether you're sad to shift in your body, whether you're excited, whether you're sad, whether you're happy, whether you're emotional, whether you're

Starting point is 00:01:29 terrified, the very first thing to shift is your breath. And then the very next thing is your heart rate. And so I know that if I feel a shift in my body that goes away that I don't want it to go, I am going to go back to my breath. And what I do, at least six deep breaths. And it's very simple. It's just in through the nose, out through the mouth. And when I breathe out through the mouth, it's breathing out like I'm breathing out through a straw. So it's a long exhale. I want my inhale to be around four or five-ish seconds. My exhale to be anywhere between eight to 10 seconds. So it's literally just... The longer you exhale, the more your heart rate actually slows down. When we breathe in deeply, we supply more oxygen to our brain and to our body,

Starting point is 00:02:25 which creates a sense of calm and alertness, but also counteracts the fight or flight mechanism that's inside of your brain. So when you're stressed or you're anxious, immediately your fight or flight kicks on and now you're going, oh my god, I'm anxious, I'm stressed, I don't know what to do. Okay, breathing is going to counteract the fight or flight mechanism that's inside of your brain. So when you're actually physiologically speaking, deep breathing exercises activates the body's parasympathetic nervous system. And so if you've been listening to me for a while when I talk about how to actually calm your body down and how to change your nervous system, there is your sympathetic nervous system, which is the, it can be excited, it can be intense, it could be stress, fight or flight,

Starting point is 00:03:00 that's the sympathetic nervous system. Parasympathetic is calm, cool, collected. So physiologically speaking, deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps counteract the stress-induced sympathetic nervous system activity. Something that's really crazy, now that I have a baby and I'm always, you know, calming him down, all that stuff is, and this is something that I learned from reading about it, to actually help calm the baby's nervous system down, is that if you're holding a baby that's stressed out, whatever it might be, crying, and you take three deep breaths,

Starting point is 00:03:36 the baby's nervous system will start to calm down with your nervous system. And so three deep breaths can change not only your nervous system, but also the baby that you're holding's nervous system. But there was a study that was done in Japan years ago that found out that six deep breaths can massively change the state that somebody's in. It takes maybe a minute and a half. So whenever your state shifts to a place you don't want to be, just immediately go back to your breath. Okay? You can decrease your heart rate, reduce your blood pressure and relax a little bit more. The next thing that I always go to as well is gratitude. What you focus on grows.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Focusing on what you don't want is going to know you're going to notice more things that you don't want. What you don't have, you're going to notice more things you don't have. What you used to have that you don't have anymore, you're going to start noticing that. What you need to do is change your perspective. And you know, in the last episode, in many episodes, I say set your GPS for how you want to feel. So I focus on gratitude first thing in the morning. I get it. It sounds corny and cliche and boop, boop, be do. Okay, hippie, you want to focus on gratitude? But it actually works because you're setting your reticular activating system to pay attention to things that you're grateful for so that you find more things to be grateful for, which is going to have less feeling

Starting point is 00:04:48 of lack, of loss, of longing, of stress, of anxiety, all of that. So you change your perspective. Think about everything that you have. Think about everything that's around you. Think about everyone that you could be grateful for. You know, if you think about what you don't have, what you want, all that, you know, how your life isn't where you want to be, that can be stressful. That can bother the hell out of you. And often we become consumed with what we don't have or what we lost or what we desire. And if we're constantly focusing on that, it's going to stress us out. It amplifies our stress level.

Starting point is 00:05:19 So what I like to do is focus on what it is that I have that I can be grateful for. If you're sitting and listening to me and you have nothing or you feel like you have nothing, you woke up today. You've got breath and you've got a heartbeat. 150,000 people didn't wake up today that were alive yesterday. That's something you can be grateful for. You're here. You're listening to this.

Starting point is 00:05:37 And so can you focus on gratitude? The third thing is just go for a walk. Walking has a lot of therapeutic benefits for humans. Forward motion seen through the eyes actually starts to lower cortisol levels in your brain. And cortisol is a stress hormone. So simply going for a walk for 10 minutes without your phone, without headphones, because if you go for a walk and you just look at your phone the entire time, it's not going to help. You want to actually look forward and watch all of the stuff pass by your peripheral vision.

Starting point is 00:06:05 That actually calms you down and lowers your cortisol. And so you just go for a walk for 10 minutes. Disconnect from whatever it is that's actually stressing you out. And if possible, try to do it in nature. Being in nature itself has been shown to lower your cortisol levels. So if you can go for a walk that's like a walk around a garden, or if you can find a little park that you can go walk around, that will lower your stress hormones as well. The natural environment that you're out in promotes a calming effect, which is also, it's called, I hope I don't mispronounce this, biphilia hypothesis is what it is. Suggests that humans have an innate desire to

Starting point is 00:06:45 connect with nature. And so walking in nature has been associated with decreased levels of depression and really what it comes down to is can you go out in the forest? Can you go out around trees? You know there's a thing that's called in Japan it's called shinrin yoku. I don't hope I didn't destroy that. Which basically means forest bathing. It's a Japanese concept that translates to taking in the forest atmosphere of forest bathing. And it involves immersing yourself into a forest environment, be around trees. And it's been shown scientifically to lower physical and mental health problems. So if you feel like you have physical problems, if you feel like you have mental health problems, just being in nature tends to help a lot. So

Starting point is 00:07:28 go for a walk in nature if you can. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Number four, another thing that will help you is to write it out. Write it down, put it down, pen and paper, journal all of it out. A lot of times the solution is way easier than you actually think that it is. There was a study that was done in 1986. It was called Confronting a Traumatic Event Toward Understanding of Inhibition and Disease. So toward an understanding of inhibition disease. People always ask like, what's the names of these? I'm giving the actual names now so you can look it up if you want to. But basically, it was one of the pioneering studies in the area of research where they found the effect of writing down traumatic events.

Starting point is 00:08:07 Now, we would think that we write down traumatic events or things that are stressing us out or whatever it might be, and it would make it worse. But what they found was that participants who wrote about traumatic experiences showed significant improvements in physical and physiological well-being compared to those who wrote down about superficial topics. Just, oh, this is how my day was today. And so when you can write down what it is that's stressing you out, what traumatic events that you can have, you actually have a lot more, first off, you feel like you have more control over it because you can start to plan the things out. And then second, you realize that you're reprocessing all of these things in more of a positive way versus being, you know, if you had a traumatic event that happened to you seven years ago and you haven't, you've been trying not to

Starting point is 00:08:47 think about it, of course it's going to stress you out. But if you can go back and say, okay, now I've done a lot of healing over the past seven years, I'm going to write about it. And now you can actually start to reprocess it with all of the healing that you've done. That traumatic event from seven years ago doesn't have as much power over you. The more that you can write things down, the more that you can talk about it, it loses its power over you. Shame breeds in the dark. So the more that you leave it in the dark, the more it can control you. So that's number four.

Starting point is 00:09:14 Number five, this is something that I would recommend that is a little bit different, maybe not something you would have thought that I would talk about, is actually try to get your blood levels checked. I had a time a couple years ago where I didn't feel like 100% for a few months. So a few years ago, I was like, man, I feel like I'm operating at like 70% of my capacity. I don't know what's going on. And so I went to a doctor, a local doctor, and I was like, hey, I want to get my blood levels checked. So they did this crazy panel on me, tons and tons and tons of blood tests on me. And everything was really good, except for there was a specific vitamin B and vitamin D

Starting point is 00:09:49 that I was low on. It wasn't like just just vitamin B or just vitamin D. It was like specific ones. So the doctor's like, okay, I'm going to give you very specific stuff that you can take. There's drops that I should take in the morning. I took them in the morning and literally within like three days, I felt like a completely different person. And I was like, oh my God, this is crazy. I felt stressed and I felt anxious and I felt very low levels of energy throughout the day. I found what I was deficient

Starting point is 00:10:15 in. Within three days, I felt like a completely different person. I had more energy. I felt more positive. I felt more happy. It was wild. And so just a little side note, the thing I would do is just get your blood levels checked and just see if maybe you're deficient on things, vitamins, minerals that you're not getting. So that's number five. Number six, you're not going to like this. Most people don't, is consider less caffeine. If you are stressed and anxious throughout the day, well, you might be having too much caffeine. And maybe what you should do is instead of having coffee, maybe switch to green tea. Try to remove caffeine from your life for a few days and just see what happens. For me, I've removed caffeine from my life and I did not have

Starting point is 00:10:58 any sort of withdrawals from it, which thank God. But sometimes people have withdrawals from it. So you could either just go cold turkey and see if you have any withdrawals from it, or you could just go, hey, I'm going to have green tea. So I'm still getting some caffeine, but I'm not going to have as much because there's definitely a whole lot less in green tea. So either completely get rid of caffeine for seven days, for 24 days, for 30 days, whatever it is that you want, and just see how your body reacts to it. See if you have less stress. I guarantee you probably will. Or at least massively reduce the amount. So if you normally have like three cups of coffee throughout the day and you feel like you're really stressed in the afternoon, well, maybe just go

Starting point is 00:11:39 ahead and just have one cup of coffee in the morning. Just check it out. See if that's what you need. You know, sometimes when your vitamin levels, like I spoke about just a minute ago, are corrected, you realize you don't need as much caffeine. And so I would recommend that. Number seven is one that I absolutely love to do. If you feel stressed, if you feel anxious, if you feel fight or flight, whatever it is that it might be, and you've got five or ten minutes, what I would do is put on ten minutes of comedy. Laughing releases dopamine, and dopamine actually buffers against cortisol. And so the way this actually works inside of your brain is laughter has been shown to reduce levels of cortisol, which is the brain's primary stress hormone. And the reason why is because when you have dopamine introduced into your brain where there's cortisol,

Starting point is 00:12:27 it buffers it and actually lowers your cortisol levels. And so people, when they laugh, if you're stressed out and you could get someone to laugh, usually it makes them feel a whole lot better because it actually decreases their cortisol levels inside of their brain. The other thing that it does is when you laugh, it releases endorphins. And so laughter stimulates the production of endorphins,

Starting point is 00:12:49 which is your body's natural feel-good chemicals. And endorphins promote an overall sense of well-being. And also, oddly enough, can actually cause temporary pain relief. And the other thing that it does, laughing, is physical relaxation. After laughing, your muscles can remain relaxed for up to 45 minutes. So the act of laughing involves many muscles in the body. And after laughter subsides, the muscles tend to relax, leading to just physical relaxation for up to about 45 minutes.

Starting point is 00:13:18 So whenever you feel too much anxiety or too much stress, if you've got five minutes, if you've got 10 minutes, put on your favorite comedian, put on your favorite comedy, movie, TV show, and just watch it for a few minutes and watch how it lowers your stress and your cortisol levels. And then last one that I recommend for you is this. Number eight is to put on slow music. There is music that is designed for relieving stress. There is a song and I've recommended it many times on this podcast. It's called Weightless, and it's by a band or person. I don't know who it is, but the band is called Marconi Union. And I found an article on this like five years ago where it's saying it is found to be with

Starting point is 00:13:57 all of these studies. I don't know what studies they do, but it's found to be the most relaxing song ever created. I was like, cool, I'm going to save this for whenever I get stressed out. So whenever I do get stressed out, whenever I'm noticing my mind's going too much, I feel too much stress, too much anxiety, I'll put on my headphones or if I'm driving the car, I'll put this song on and I'll just play it on repeat. So for me, that is a song that really helps me calm down. Another song that really helps me calm down, I don't know why, but it's the Out of Africa theme song, the movie that came out years and years ago. For some it's the Out of Africa theme song, the movie that came out years and

Starting point is 00:14:26 years ago. For some reason, the Out of Africa theme song just really calms me down. It was my grandma's favorite song, and so maybe she played it a lot when I was a kid, and it just turns on parts of my brain to kind of relax me. But what I would recommend is finding songs that calm you down. I love to go to the gym and put on hardcore EDM or put on hardcore metal. That's not the type of stuff that I want to listen to and I want to calm down. So if you want to calm down, have specific songs that are just tailored towards calming your body down. And there was a study that was done in 2001 in the Journal of Music Therapy. And what they found was the study involves subjects who were exposed to stress-inducing tasks.

Starting point is 00:15:06 And the people who listened to relaxing music prior to that task exhibited less subjective anxiety, reduced blood pressure, and decreased heart rate compared to those who did not listen to the music. So literally, before they had a stress-inducing task, they had them listen to calming music. And all of those people had less anxiety, lower blood pressure, and decreased heart rate compared to the people who didn't listen to calming music, and all of those people had less anxiety, lower blood pressure, and decreased heart rate compared to the people who didn't listen to any music. And so there's many tips and techniques that you can use to lower your stress and your anxiety. It's important for you to understand we're all going to feel, we're all humans, we're all going to have stress, we're going to have anxiety, we're going to have great moments in our life, we're going to have terrible moments in our life. But really, when you start to notice yourself dip into too much stress, too much anxiety, it's important to have tools and techniques like this to pull out

Starting point is 00:15:51 of your tool belt and say, you know what, I'm noticing myself getting really stressed out, you know what I'm going to go back to? That Rob Dial guy always talks about breath, I'm going to go back to my breath. And you use it and just allow yourself to calm back down. Because when you're stressed, and when you're anxious, your prefrontal cortex or your brain turns off. You don't get as much blood flow to it. And the prefrontal cortex of your brain is where you make executive decisions. And that's why when your emotions are really high, your logic is low.

Starting point is 00:16:16 And so you can calm down. You can get yourself back to calm, cool, collected, so that you can start making good decisions from there. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, if you love this podcast, the best way that you can actually say thank you is to actually share this to somebody, wherever it is that might be. You can share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you would continue to share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single

Starting point is 00:16:47 episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Practice These Techniques To Relieve Daily Stress

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