The School of Greatness - 659 Overcome Stress and Own the Day with Master Coaches

Episode Date: June 27, 2018

DON'T ALLOW STRESS TO CONSUMER YOUR LIFE. I’ve been dealing with a lot of stress lately in my life. I get wrapped up in it and tell myself (and others) how stressed I am. This mentality ends up breeding even more stress, and it’s honestly not healthy. As I listen to others around me, I’ve come to realize this is the norm. Despite all of the technology we have and all of our luxuries, we consider ourselves to be the most stressed generation. That’s why I decided to bring you another great mashup talking about this stress from Amanda Enayati, Todd Kashdan, Lissa Rankin, and Arianna Huffington. Stress, more than anything, is a mindset. It’s something we create ourselves in order to try and protect ourselves. We even become stressed about the unknown. The possibility of infinite success, or infinite failure, naturally gets our emotions to focus the darker side of the world. Instead, I challenge you to take the lessons from each of these clips. Apply them to your life and see just how much better you can make your life. I’d love to hear what you think about this episode, and how you apply these lessons in your life - so don’t hesitate to reach out to me on social media and let me know how it’s been working for you. Download this episode now and learn about how you can take control of your stress, on Episode 659. In This Episode You Will Learn: The narrative we create about stress (3:39) What real stress is (5:19) How to control your stress (7:04) The misconception of optimism (8:29) How we need to look at our limits (8:58) Some of the bravest people there are (10:15) Why the ability to tolerate pain determines your success (11:46) The four beliefs that make us frightened (14:23) How we fear what we cherish (15:35) Ways you can shift your beliefs (16:47) How loss can liberate your soul (18:01) Why you should strive for integration over balance(18:58) Myths about entrepreneurs (19:48) Plus much, much more

This is episode number 659 on overcoming stress and owning the day. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. John D. Paola said, slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you. I'm very excited about this episode. I've been actually dealing with a little bit of stress myself lately, so I thought this would be a powerful episode since it seems like stress has been happening for a lot of people. I don't know what is in the air and why people are feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, but it's always

good to reconnect to ourselves, to a greater purpose, and to a healthy lifestyle. And that's what this is all about. This is a mashup of some of the best wisdom that I've heard from some of the top experts like Amanda Aniety, like Alyssa Rankin, like Ariana Huffington, and Todd Cashton, all about healthy ways to overcome and deal with stress and how to understand where it comes from and how to manage it. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Again, lewishouse.com slash 659. Share it with your friends on your Instagram stories, on Twitter and Facebook, and let me know what you think. And before we dive in, got to give a shout out to the fan of the week. This is from Andre, who says, Lewis, thank you so much for being a leader here. You inspire me to

be the best version of myself as I see you doing the same. Thank you for putting together your vision in a way that shows me that my success is possible too. I learn so much from every interview. Love your five-minute Fridays. Keep up the great work. Looking forward to hanging with you one day on this road to greatness. So Andre, thank you so much for listening every single week. Again, we've got episodes on Monday, Wednesday, and our five-minute Fridays, something always to get you inspired, enlightened, and entertained throughout your week to have you optimize your life and start living that richness that you always want to live. So thank you guys for leaving reviews. And again, you can leave one over on iTunes or the podcast app on your phone. We've got over 3,000 plus five-star reviews, and I appreciate each one of your guys'

thoughts and remarks. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode all about overcoming stress. Why is it that we have this narrative that we have about how stressed out we are? Now, I don't think, and some of the top experts in the world whom I interviewed for the book, don't think that we live in the most stressed out generation. There are two main differences. A, we think that we are one of the most stressed out generations because we have this story circulating. We have these stories of how stressed out we are circulating constantly. And what happens with those stories? Because humans have something called emotional contagion, because our emotions are viral. They go viral. When I walk into a room, if I'm not in a good

mood, I'm kind of pissy. I pass that pissiness onto the next person. That's true. Right? Or if I'm joyful, then I can pass that onto the next person. But what happens is we're so connected and we have this sense of adversity that all we're doing is circulating this sense of constant adversity around. And so if you really become mindful of it and go around day to day and kind of listen for the phrase, oh my God, I'm so stressed out, or she's so stressful, or this is such a stressful situation. You will hear it constantly because it's become part of our cultural narrative that we are all so stressed out. And then that narrative goes through the ether, goes through our phones, goes through the articles we write and the movies we make and the films and the music that we make. And it sort of passes around like a big virus.

And so we all have this perception that we're stressed out. Now, here's why that's a problem. Because stress isn't so much about what's happening to you, but how your body is reacting to what's happening to you, right? And so if you think that you are always stressed out and you're always under siege, then your body is always going to be reacting as if it's under siege. And that right there is the definition of toxic stress. It is endless. It goes on for a long time. It's long term. You don't know what to do about it.

So you're basically walking around constantly with cortisol flowing through your body and in a state of inflammation. That is a recipe for disaster. I love that. And you're not only creating, if you're not physically creating cancer in your body, you're creating cancerous environment in yourself and spreading that to other people if you're constantly stressed out. And I love this in part two of your book where it says, stress is a guide. Speaking into what you just said there, Gandhi says, your belief becomes your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. So just speaking into what you were saying, the more you do those things, it becomes part of your body and it becomes part of your life. Exactly. It's a downward spiral. So if I was to, you know,

say you have a friend who is constantly stressed out and who's like always in their head and speaking in a negative way and saying how stressed they are and they're constantly just like, they're not calm. There's no clarity. They're just negative Nancys constantly. And they said, Amanda, what do I need to do to be less stressful? How can I be calm? If you were to say like, here are three to five things to get started, what advice would you give that person? There are two things that pervade on our culture constantly. One is people get really pissed off at you when you say you're going to have to create your own world because they say, oh, do you mean I created the negativity around me? And the difference there is mindset. There's some amazing research coming out of Stanford

by Carol Dweck and a fantastic, brilliant researcher named Aaliyah Crum. And the research shows that if you have a stress mindset, if you're walking around in responding in a stress mindset, then you will really sort of suffer from that stress mindset. So the idea is to first examine your stories and say, am I walking around? Do I have a stress mindset? What are the stories that I'm telling? And the first part of my book, the first chapter of the second part of my book about resilience really deconstructs our stories and tells us the elements of how we can figure out what stories are circulating, how we can be mindful in the moment, how we can be self-aware, how we can increase our mental agility, and how

we can cultivate optimism. There's this idea going around and all this writing every once in a while about the power of negative thinking. There was a whole magazine that came out about it recently. And somehow people have this misperception that optimists have it all wrong, that optimism means inauthentic exuberance. And I think that is so wrong because I'm a huge optimist and I don't deny pain and misery at all because I don't think that's optimism. I think optimism ultimately is the ability to suffer, but to continue to tell good stories that propel you forward instead of remaining in the suffering. Just like not everybody could make a professional sports league, whether you name the sport volleyball, from volleyball to golf, we still

have a certain range to which we are able to get to based on our, you know, God given talents, gifts, and kind of, you know, physiology that we have. I mean, I was not going to be in professional football league like you, no matter how many hours that I trained and how many hours I put in the gym, it just wasn't going to happen. So it's trainable and we don't know what the limits are. And so there's no reason to suggest limits about how much pain that we can tolerate because of that. And probably you can think of players that on every team that you've been in since you were in middle school, they were probably not the best players. But everybody respected them because they never rolled like a fish.

They always were the last person to finish a drill, not because they were slow, because they wouldn't stop fighting. They just kept running, kept pushing. Sweat didn't bother them. Tears didn't bother them. Cuts didn't bother them. Bruises didn't bother them. There are plenty of great athletes who wish that they could have that ability to tolerate pain. And emotionally, I mean, I know for myself, when I'm always asked of like, you know, who is your greatest heroes in your life?

There's a couple physicists and scientists that I mentioned, but also I mentioned stand-up comedians. Because these are people who handle the pain of having to tell jokes in such a way that you have to try to get laughter and smiles every 15 seconds for a 45-minute set. It's just terrifying to think about because it's so hard to connect with someone. But to make someone laugh, it's just a whole other level and consistently for a 45-minute stint. And so the courage to get up there and do that, knowing that you have no idea what people's sense of humor are. Humor is when you walk out there day in day out and then constantly trying to experiment with new material that's bravery that's that's emotional that's emotional agility and that's the that's the ability to tolerate pain and if you are unable to sit in front of a room full of people and flounder and not land jokes in front of them you'll never make

it as a comedian right i mean you have to be willing to fail and i land jokes in front of them, you'll never make it as a comedian. I mean, you have to be willing to fail. And I think one of the, and this is something we have control over. One of the big predictors of whether people are successful in life is not how well they did in school, not what they scored on the SAT or the GRE or the MCAT or any achievement test. It's whether you can tolerate pain and control your emotions so that you can get through a difficult situation. Why is it that reason? Why is the ability to tolerate pain

the key to living a great life though? Like why is, you know, I'm just curious. Well, the building blocks for a meaningful, happy life are moments. And in order to get a greater frequency of joy and a greater frequency of love and a greater frequency of connecting intimately with another person and a greater frequency of feeling as if you've done something where you've got a legacy that's going to live longer than the few years you're going to be on this planet. You've got to learn how to work

for the long haul, which means sitting and reading books. It means reading people, learning about people. It means going into the gym. It means going into classes. It means listening to people that are smarter than you, being around people that intimidate you so you can kind of acquire, what about them? What can I learn from them to bring to myself, to have all those distressing emotions where you're just a rookie and all those distressing emotions recognized. And there's a gap between my knowledge and my skills and where I am now. There's a gap between that and where I want to be that causes pain. So if you can't, to learn, if you aren't willing to grow, you're not going to evolve as a person. You're not going to reach those aspirational goals

you're shooting for. And the key feature of that is being able to tolerate the distress that goes along with the learning curve. In the fear cure, I talk about what I call the four fearful assumptions. And these are four beliefs that I think make us really frightened. One is uncertainty is unsafe. One is I can't handle losing what I cherish. One is it's a hostile universe, so I have to protect myself. And the last one is I'm all alone. So obviously, if you think you're all alone in a hostile universe at risk of loss and uncertainty, then life is scary.

Yeah. And I think just uncertainty, even uncertainty in the face of good things happening is scary for us. uncertainty in the face of good things happening is scary for us. So even, you know, you talk to a mother who's about to give birth and she's often scared. You know, you talk to somebody who's about to get married, to the person that they consider the love of their life, and they're scared. So even moving into the uncertain in exciting ways is frightening to us because we don't know how to come into right relationship with uncertainty and we're terrified of losing what we cherish. So I love Brene Brown's work and she talks in Daring Greatly, she talks about what she calls foreboding joy. And she describes it as that feeling of standing over your child.

I have a nine-year-old, so I know this feeling, where you're standing over your gorgeous child who's sleeping, and you feel your heart just bursting with love for this child. And the second you let yourself really start to feel how much you love this child, you're flooded with this terrifying feeling of how vulnerable you are because of how much you have to lose. You can barely stand the thought of like, what if I lose this precious being? And I think we kind of walk around that way. Like I have this amazing life and I have these moments of foreboding joy where I'm like, what if I lost it all? And so there's a part of us that wants to like shore everything up and make sure

we can shore up our finances and shore up the safety of our loved ones and make sure we don't get our hearts broken and protect our bodies and, you know, make sure there's no toxic chemicals in our house. And we're so busy shoring up our lives that we stopped having joyful lives. I mean, we play too safe is what you're saying. having joyful lives. I mean, we play it too safe is what you're saying. Yeah. And what I talk about in the fear cure is how we can actually shift those beliefs. It's a cultural choice. These are cultural beliefs. And when I was at 16,000 feet in the Andes living in a Karos village, studying the shamans there, I realized they don't have those beliefs. They actually have, I had just finished writing the fear cure. so it was very validating to be there

because I didn't know this about the Keros culture, this indigenous tribe I was staying with. But the four, what I called the courage cultivating truths, which are the opposite of the four fearful assumptions, these are the worldview that the Keros live by, and it's the opposite. So instead of uncertainty is unsafe, what if uncertainty is the gateway to possibility? What if when you don't know what the future holds, anything could happen, right? And there's a whole journey that can go on when you come into right relationship with uncertainty, where you realize that instead

of playing it safe, you know, there's a way to allow your intuition to protect you so that you can actually safely take risks that open the gates of possibility. And instead of loss being something that we can't handle, that loss is natural and can lead to growth. And I know for me, when I went through what I called my perfect storm, where I gave birth to my daughter and then within two weeks, my dog died, my healthy young brother wound up in full-blown liver failure as a rare side effect from the antibiotic Zithromax that he was taking for a sinus infection. And then my beloved physician father was 59 years old and died of a brain tumor all in two weeks. And I can look back on that and say,

wow, loss is natural and can lead to growth. Like that was the most transformative loss of my life. And I wouldn't be living the life that I'm living now if I didn't have that loss. And I think almost everybody that's listening can probably think of some experience of loss in their life that at the time felt absolutely devastating. And in retrospect, we can see how it breaks your heart open. That hurts, but it also liberates the soul. I don't like the word balance because our lives are not really about balance. It's all about integration for me.

What it means, if your everyday routine includes getting adequate sleep, when you have a sick child, a big deadline, then you have some reserves to tap into. Life is always going to throw you curveballs where you have to stay up all night or something happens. I'm not suggesting this won't happen. But what has happened in our culture is we've made that the norm. Yeah, the main thing. And that's really the problem. And I think that's why I'm stressing that people need to understand that if all you care in life is about winning, then you're going to improve your chances

when you're fully recharged because that's when you're going to make your best decisions. That's when you're going to be able to see the icebergs before they hit the Titanic, which is a very important thing for entrepreneurs. And look at entrepreneurs now. I was in Silicon Valley this week. Three quarters of startups fail.

And there is the myth of the entrepreneur who never sleeps, stays up all night. Well, maybe there's a correlation. Why you're failing. Between sleep deprivation and three quarters of them failing. Interesting. And I was speaking at the Stanford Business School, and the students there, the MBA students were telling me how many of them have meningitis or whooping cough or all these diseases which are signs of a suppressed immune system because you are burnt out. So in the end, it's not even as though you're more productive because you end up being in bed sick instead of being in bed because you're charging there you have it my friends i hope you enjoyed this episode all about overcoming stress again

don't allow stress to consume your life make sure you take a strong hold on it and allow your body to relax in those challenging situations. Or just make sure you're constantly focusing on what's important in your life and figuring out how to let go of that stress when it comes. There's lots of great techniques and strategies to do that, but it's always good to have peace of mind, sleep well, work out, and allow yourself to get through that stress on a day-to-day basis. Again, if you enjoyed this, let me know. Share with your friends. lewishowes.com slash 659 is the link to share with your friends about overcoming stress and owning the day. And my friends, as John D. Paola said, slow down and everything you are chasing will

come around and catch you. Now's the time to be at peace within your heart and in your mind so you can allow things to come to you as opposed to you constantly chasing everything around you. I love you so very much. You know what time it is.

It's time to go out there and do something great. great