You are the Universe! - E22: Stress Be Gone - Transforming Chronic Stress & Overwhelm in Daily Life

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Stress Be Gone - Transforming Chronic Stress & Overwhelm in Daily Life Join Victoria for a powerful episode in learning how to transform chronic stress in in daily life. Learn simple techniques to incorporate into your day to day routine. www.VictoriaHaffer.com

Welcome to the You or the Universe podcast. I'm your host, Victoria Hafer, intuitive healer, and holistic life and body coach with over 20 years of facilitating massive transformation for people and animals. And I'm so flipping glad you're here. Today's topic is stress be gone. Transforming stress and overwhelm in everyday life. So today we're going to cover what is stress, what causes stress. stress and overwhelm, what we can control, the long-term effects of chronic stress, some mindset reset practical tools, strategies to balance stress, and also you're going to choose to commit to a daily practice. That is true. So what is stress? A lot of times we hear the word stress and we just automatically think of stress as being negative. But truly, the truth is there are actually negative stressors and positive stressors.

So, you know, a lot of common negative stressors would be maybe you lose your job, you go through, you're going through a divorce, and maybe even moving, right? It really depends on the perception and the paradigm shift that you're in, however you see it. It really depends a lot on your past experiences and how truly resilient you are and how you can bounce back from, you know, things that you absolutely can't control. So the definition of stress is a physiological response to a thought and experience or an event, truly. Right? So again, stress can be good or bad. It's the key is your perception of the situation or the experience. The truth is that, you know, two people can experience the same exact event like getting married, perhaps.

For most people, you would think that that would be pretty exciting and a positive experience. But for some people, it can be the event itself and all the planning and all the things that they have to do, they actually perceive it as being somewhat stressful. So again, it has to do with your mindset about the specific situation. So what are the most common stressors in your life? I can just hear you now. you know, most people will say things like money and traffic and their job and your family or your in-laws, politics, right?

I mean, I could go on and on and on about what are the common stressors in our lives. It could be your health. So again, I want you to just take a moment and think about all of those things or the thing that you just thought about that is stressful in your life. And my question to you is this. What do you have control over? What do you absolutely have control over? I'm sure you've heard this question before. It's not a new question. And we still continue to stress over the things that we have no control over. So again, I want you to think about it. Do you, you, you have control over the traffic? Do you have control? Well, you might have control over if you're

going to a job that's sucking the life out of you, right? Every single day, you do have a choice. You might say, I don't have a choice. I have to blah, blah, blah, pay my bills. You know, I have kids I need to put through college, all those things, I'm sure are very true. And you always have a choice. So just keep that in mind. So how often are you as one of, you, as one of, you, my past clients coined the term future objecting. Right. So again, we really have three options of how we show up, right? In the moment, in our bodies, right? The one is to live in the future, right?

All constantly projecting onto the future and worrying. That's that chronic worry, chronic fear, maybe it shows up as a anxiety, sometimes for people it could be a panic attack. So they actually say that worry is like praying for something bad to happen. Right. So just just let that set in for a moment. So are you a warrior? Maybe you used to be and you've transformed that that low vibrational pattern in your life. And then the other aspects. So you can be in the future, which is that whole thing, the mind, right? That mind. Remember, you are not the mind. Your mind is just like any muscle that you can train. And that's why we call it a practice, right, a presence practice or a meditation practice. But that just notice

how often throughout the day you're future ejecting. And then the other, the other end of the continuum is living in the past. And that typically sits with regret and that whole, you know, ever have something had happened that was really, who, it was, I have a few things coming up for me now where you wish you could turn back time, right? You wish you were a Superman and you could literally, you know, fly around the world and turn back time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, right, in the human, in the human life. It's done. It's happened. And so you playing it over and over and over again in your head is certainly not serving anybody. And then that, you know, really, what needs to come is you need to get to a place where you make peace with it. And I'm not saying

it's easy, sisters and brothers. I am not saying that. However, it's really important because if it's, especially if it's something that's sitting in your field, it's like an open tab on your computer. I want you to understand this. Imagine you're at your computer and, you know, how many open tabs do you have on your computer? I typically average about 20. But just know this. Even if you're not open to that page and that tab, that page is still pulling, right, from the energy and the hard drive of your computer. That's just like any past situations and relationships that you haven't brought to fruition and made peace with them, right? Whether it means you have to forgive yourself, right? Again, it's just that whole thing that, you know, the Buddhist actually.

say that the majority of our suffering comes from wishing things were different than what they are. So again, I'm not saying, you know, the whole thing is look at the things that are stressing you out or creating, you know, lower frequency energies in your world and then ask yourself, what can I truly do about them? Can you do something about it? Again, if it's your job and you're going to your work and you're working 40 to 50 hours a week and you absolutely hate it and it's just sucking the life out of you, then you have a choice. You do have a choice. So sit with that for a moment. So how often my question to you is, what percentage of your time are you sitting in the present moment? Right. That's the sweet spot. So mindset reset number one, be present. Just breathe. So simple.

You don't have to buy any fancy equipment. It's just your own breath. Something's so quick that you can do. Right. So really the magic in the space, like, I want you to just ponder, again, without judging yourself, just ask yourself, how often are you reacting to life? Reacting. And that's typically a symptom of us not feeling nourished, us not feeling full, us, maybe you feel depleted, maybe you feel exhausted.

And it's really easy to just kind of be on the edge of. of your seat in life and then constantly be reacting to all the things around you. Right? So it's, you know, one of the really most powerful tools that I teach my clients and that I've taught myself, and you know, sometimes it doesn't always work. But when you choose the tool, it will work every single time and that is the pause. So that space between your perception of something being, um, you know, something you don't like, right? Anything that makes you feel annoyed, frustrated, irritated,

angst is a trigger, right? It's a trigger. So you get triggered by something, whether someone cut you off in traffic or someone's just rude to you at work or you see a post on social media that you don't agree with and you just, your blood begins to boil, right? And you want, you know, our first instinct, you know, from the reptilian mind is we want to lash out. So again, can you pause? It's a practice. It takes a while. Me being a, my fire sign, I mean, my son sign is Ares, which is a fire sign. So I am the fire dragon for sure. And you don't want to mess with me and you don't want to cross me. And especially if, you know, if someone's trying to bring danger to one of my loved

ones, you know, just imagine the lioness protecting her cubs, right? That would be me. And there's times that I don't need to come off as that fire breathing dragon in life. And I can just take a pause. Just take a breath. Right. And it's something we need to choose. You either choose it or you don't. So just breathe. So a really simple breathing exercise goes. like this. Inhale for four seconds, exhale for eight seconds. So ideally you're looking for your exhale to be twice as long as your inhalation. You can play around with it. If that feels like it's too much or you're straining, you can certainly do, you know, inhale for three, exhale for six. If you have a strong pranayon practice, breath practice, you can go longer. You could

inhale for five, exhale for ten, right? So just play with that, but you do want to get to the point where you're not that you're straining, but you're really pushing out as much air and as much stale, stagnant ear from your lungs as possible. So let's just take a moment. Even if you're driving, just keep your eyes open and just practice this. Now, ideally five minutes, about five minutes is good, but if you have a minute, you've got three minutes, right? Remember, all of these things will be better than nothing for sure. We all have time to do this. Maybe you start a practice, even if it's in your car when you're at a red light, right, you're in traffic. These are some practices.

You can just start to breathe, right? Breathe. Inhaling for four, three, two, one. Exhale for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, nose, four, three, two, one. Exhale, eight. seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Inhale, four, three, two, one.

Exhale, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Last time, inhale four, three, two, one, exhale, eight, seven, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one. And again, if you're able to close your eyes, take some internal inventory of your body, right? Notice your physical body. How we show up in time and space is definitely determining how we're showing up. Like how your body holds on distress. Like most of us don't even realize like we different people will hold tension differently, but the typical places are going to be the neck, the upper back, you know, the rounding,

especially if you're looking down at your phone a lot, right? So keep in mind your vagus nerve, the main, your vagus nerve runs through your entire body. It runs from your, you know, your head and down the side of your neck and comes down through your digestive system and all of that. But, you know, the vagus nerve has everything to do with our how we respond to stress. And it really, if the vagus nerve is kind of shut off, if you think about when you, when you do that forward head thing, when you're looking down to your phone, you're actually compressing the vagus nerve.

And so again, that in itself could be, you know, kicking you into that stress, you know, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, right? So just notice how you're showing up in your body at the bank at, I don't know if you go to the bank anymore, but you know, at the grocery store, brushing your teeth, washing dishes at the sink. You know, how are you just talking to someone? Just, you know, walking your dog and then you stop and you're chatting with a neighbor. How are you standing in time and space? And really it's like, can you bring that head back, head over, heart over pelvis? Yeah, so again, just asking you that question of what is really stressing you out, right?

So again, it's, you might say, well, you know, it's money. Okay, money is really stressful? Is money stressing you out? Is it that, you know, lack of money, those things? And then, you know, where can you flip the switch in that space and time, right? So let's talk a little bit about stress overload. Like most people do deal with pretty, you know, a lot of, um, chronic stress, that perception that everything is just stressful. And I got to tell you,

you know, in your defense, in our defense, there's a lot of external factors that come into play, right? Things like EMFs, all the energy coming out at us, the Wi-Fi, you know, are the cell signals, you know, from the TV, the computer, your phones, there's just so much energy coming at us. And if indeed you are a, what we call an empath, or a, even a highly sensitive person, HSP, you know, you may be more sensitive to that energetic, right, electrical current. We are electrical beings. So, yes, it can be messing with our systems, just like our animals as well. Animals are extremely sensitive as well.

So just know that. So some symptoms of stress overload would be things like forgetfulness, sleep disorders, depression, high levels of anxiety, moodiness, emotional outburst, frequent illness, gut issues, oh my goodness. Do you know someone who I would like to know who doesn't have gut issues now? I remember when we were kids that wasn't the case. Low energy, feeling exhausted all the time, frequent headaches, back aches, grinding of teeth and then maybe even stress eating.

So again, I want you to just think about, do you have any? of those symptoms. Over time, and not to mention the worst thing, like when you are in stress overload, it is going to hit and kick your adrenal's butt. Your adrenals are the little glands that sit on top of your kidneys, right? And they're the ones that when we perceive, when you perceive from your brain that something stressful, you're constantly pumping those stress hormones into your body, right, cortisol and epinephrine and, yeah, so all the bad ones. I was thinking of good ones, but those aren't the ones that we're going to talk about those in just a minute.

So just imagine that. High levels. We also know that high levels of cortisol increases the ability for your body to store belly fat. So, you know, sometimes as we get older, as you start to hit like perimenopause, menopause. because in where you just have that stubborn belly fat around your gut, you want to look at what are your stress levels, right? How much cortisol is being pumped, you know, adrenaline into your body on a regular basis. And then, you know, all of the, when we look at like the blue light from our

computers and our phones, that messes with our melatonin levels, which is really the hormone that helps us sleep, that deep sleep that we need for, you know, restoration and, you know, know, deep, deep relaxation. So mindset reset number two. Okay, my favorite favorite and one of the three components that I absolutely teach my clients and students is to change their state. When I say your state, like when you're in a state, think about a mental state that you're in and just say like, I feel like I'm in a funk or I got up on the wrong side of the bed, you know, and you're just kind of cranky. So to change. your state, I guarantee you, if you do these things with intention and presence, you can definitely

shake off that mood. Right. So move your body. Right. We always say like, you know, as a Tony Robbins coach, you know, Tony Robbins used to always say, make your move. Right. Right. So move your body. So the lymphatic shake is one of my favorites as a movement therapist, you know, yoga teacher and she gong teacher. I incorporate this into almost all my classes. And basically, it's just shaking, you know, just shaking up and down. You could do it on a rebounder, which is a mini trampoline, or you can invest in a vibration plate, which is very inexpensive. If you head on over to my website, I have a link to the one that I use and I love at Victoriahafer.com under the recent Victoria's favorites. And so just shake.

your body but you don't need any equipment right so put on your favorite music I would highly recommend you go for at least 10 minutes you know put in two or three of your favorite movement songs and just shake to your heart's content you can bounce right or you can just keep your heels on the ground and just literally shake up and down something else that I find to be super helpful and powerful is yoga right some of you listening to this podcast may actually come to my yoga classes and I love you all so much, right? So yoga, you know, there's so many styles and traditions of yoga.

If you haven't tried yoga yet, there is a yoga for everybody. Yeah, I always say, you know, changing the world, you know, one yoga class at a time, and then dance. Dance is fun. Everybody can do it. Even if you, even if your legs don't work, you know, God is forbid, you're in a wheelchair. You can still dance in your, you can still chair dance, right? So move your body. Get out, walk your And again, this is a, I encourage a conscious movement, conscious movement. But again, all of it, I know for me that when I'm getting, you know, really irritated and annoyed and my go-to often is anger because sometimes, as an empath, I kind of sometimes feel the entire weight of the planet.

Like in my body, I feel the sadness of the people or the chaos or, you know, all the animals that are being displaced in their home from their homes you know all the trees getting cut down or the you know the forest burning and all those things and sometimes i can who i can really feel that like in the core of my heart and so you know the the the movement piece is going to be really really really important that conscious movement but you know going to the gym and hitting the weights heavy oof that works really well for me as well so again whatever it takes, you know, move your body, go out, you know, get out into nature if possible, and change your state, right? Make your move. Walk your dog. Whatever. Walk your cat.

Okay, so some strategies to help keep you balance because, again, you've got to look at your, you know, what I would highly recommend if you're, you know, if you're driving. But when you get home, listen to this again. Take some notes. Open up your journal. open up a notebook and really just start to to jot it out and look at your life like why are you so freaking stressed out right i mean i get it every once in a while you know we all get a little stressed out but if this is like a common thing that happens on the regular you got to look at it you've got to remember you're the common denominator and all of it my friends i know sometimes the truth hurts right so look at that and say okay where in my life am i not choosing me right am i not choosing me right am i

not choosing peace. And sometimes it's time to just let stuff go. The job, the relationship, the partner. I don't care. I don't care if you've been married for 15 years. You know, you've given it the old college try. Maybe it's time to step away. Maybe it's your family that stresses you out all the time and you need to set better boundaries. Right. So again, this is all about you, my friends, right? How are we going to? change the world if we don't change ourselves. So attitude of gratitude, you know, being in the space, you know, people start, you could start with a gratitude journal, which I've heard has been helpful for a lot of people.

But I encourage you to take the next level. So yeah, write it down, that's great, but then you shut the notebook and then you go off on your day. But what if you were to be the gratitude? What if every single thing that came into your life, right, was you could see the gratitude in it, you know, the learning, the lesson, the teaching. However, and remember that the teaching will keep coming back around. It's going to keep coming back around and keep coming back around until you learn your lesson. So again, I want you to maybe rewind that. Listen to that again,

especially if you are constantly, quote unquote, attracting the wrong partner. Right. the wrong girl, the wrong guy, whatever. So just sit with that. Feed your soul. What are you doing on a daily basis that makes your heart sing? So I want you to think about that. What when you do it, does all time stand still? Your phone doesn't matter and you feel totally at peace. Nobody's pulling at you. Nobody needs anything from you, right? It's just you and yourself. and you connected to whatever that is for you. Source, you know, divine mother, divine father, God, goddess, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Earth, whatever that is for you. But you feel connected, right, to that higher self. Yeah. So what is that? And that, again, could be a whole journaling

experience for you. If you're like, I don't know what that is, Victoria. That's fine. A lot of my clients come to me and they don't know what that is that feeds their soul or makes their heart. heart sing. So maybe think about some things you did as a child when you were younger and that you really enjoyed that you, you know, stepped away from horseback riding or painting or singing or playing an instrument, right? So, you know, typically it's in that creative arts realm. Maybe it's cooking. I don't know. Just it's there. There's something there for you. And then I'm going to encourage that you do that on the regular, right? Maybe it's not realistic to say daily, but if it's possible to do that thing daily, then do it. Write it on your calendar. Put it in there. It's like life is too short,

my friends, for you to wait and to fast forward to your deathbed and say, what the heck did I do? Right? Where's the joy? Where's the fulfillment? Another strategy, quality and quantity of sleep. So sometimes you can have enough sleep quantity-wise, but the quality isn't good. So you've got to look at, again, this could be a whole other podcast for me to talk about just sleep. And maybe I'll I'll do one. Let me know if that's something that might be of interest to you. Right. But you want to, a couple of things to look at are you're, you know, are you eating two hours before bed? Because if you go to bed, you know, you're eating and then you go to bed and you don't allow for your food to digest, a lot of your, the blood is shunting into the stomach, right, to aid and digestion. And then that, you know, that can keep you awake. It's a process, right? Is your room dark enough?

caffeine things like that. So there's lots of different, too much screen time, especially, you know, before bed. So yeah, so just think about, you know, what are some things that you might be able to change to allow for a better quality of sleep? Setting good boundaries. Again, I mentioned this earlier, but once again, it comes up because it's really important. You know, the time is over, my friends, for letting people walk all over you, right? No more Mrs. Nice guy, Mrs. Nice girl, whatever. Like, forget about it. Forget about it. It's old school. You bought, you know, where did you buy that you letting, putting other people's needs before you over and over and over again was sexy, right? Frick that shit. No, delete destroy and uncreate all that. Forget

about it. And then your awareness of focus. Lastly, where your energy goes, your energy flows. Your energy grows. So just notice how often your thoughts are not of the highest vibration. Again, without judgment, notice. This is a hard one, but this is the practice. This is the mind practice. This is where we call, you know, the mindfulness practice of knowing what are you even thinking and how much is it serving you? Remember your thoughts, your words, your actions, and your belief systems create your reality, right? Law of attraction and law of vibration, universal laws. Mindset reset number three. Quiet the monkey mind. So daily, daily, these are things that you absolutely get to do on a daily basis. And don't give me the excuse that you don't have the time

because we're just talking five minutes, ten minutes. And some of these things can actually be combined with existing things that you're doing. Things like, A guided meditation, right? An app, YouTube. I have, if, you know, you're listening from YouTube, my YouTube channel, I actually have a bunch of guided meditations on there that you can choose from. That could be really powerful short, you know, five to maybe 10 minutes long. Get out into nature.

Again, it doesn't cost a thing, right? Get out into nature. Take your shoes and socks off. Put those beautiful feet on the ground and get grounded. Right? There's a documentary out there. I think it's called grounding. Watch it. And, you know, so much scientific research showing how people have healed long-term chronic illnesses by getting out into nature more and putting your feet on the earth because you're connecting to the magnetic pulse of Gaia. Right? The Schumann residence. It's very, very, very powerful. Discharge, right? All that energy, all that static electricity sitting in your field. Let it go.

essential oils, right? So again, be mindful if you've got a diffuser and you're, you know, if you have animals, there's some animal essential oils that can be toxic. You always want to keep a window open and have a space where you can allow for your animals to leave the room, right? And music. My all-time favorite music, right? Spotify, love it. There are all kinds of cool playlists. You can find all your favorite music from when you were younger. You know, I'm a rock and roll. girl I do like a lot of different kinds of music and I love like frequency music and solfagio stuff. Music you can there's creative frequencies that you can play while you're working. That's one thing I always do to kind of keep the vibe high and clear the energy of the

space. Yeah, so music, go for it. Okay, so we've been hanging out for a while. Yeah, this is a long one. I don't usually go this long. Now we're at 30 minutes. So this is an important. important one and feel free to listen to it again, right? So I have a question for you, right? Like here, why don't you write a letter? Dear stress, let's break up, right? Do you really want to break up with your stress or are you an adrenaline junkie? And do you kind of like get off on that? That it's like, oh, like is it part of your persona and your personality that you're all stressed out all the time, right? And then using that as an excuse to not, you know, take part in a more peaceful way of showing up in your world. So what if you were to make a commitment to yourself? That's what I'm

going to ask you right now. What are you, you know, we've talked about a lot of things on here. There's mindset pieces. There's movement practices. There's guided meditations, right? There's, there's making some changes to your relationship. I want you to choose one thing, one thing that you're willing to either stop doing and or start doing, right? So maybe it's scrolling on social media. Maybe it's binge watching, you know, coming home every night, binge watching on Netflix and then drinking a bottle of wine. And again, I've had clients, I have made many clients that have done those things. So again, no judgment here. This is all has to be done from a place of just really truth and authenticity. Remember, this is the year of the dragon, 2004.

adds up to eight the number of abundance. And this is the year of authenticity and stepping into your sovereign divinity, activating your sovereign divinity to let all the bullshit go, right? Stop the excuses and, yeah, step into a more powerful, peaceful, joyful, sexy life. Right. So make that commitment to yourself. Make a comment. Again, if you're listening to it on YouTube, you can make a little comment there, or you can message me. on any form of social media, right? So I really, really want to hear from you. I do this, right?

This is my gift to you. I do this because I adore you. I want you to, it is your birthright, right? To live a prosperous, abundant life and to be joy, to be the epitome of joy. It is our birthright to do that. So again, really looking at some of these practices, they will absolutely help you and support you in getting to from

Pain Island to Pleasure Island, right? That'd be great. I'm here for you. If you do want to reach out and, you know, if I can support you in any way on your amazing journey, we call this journey of life, feel free to reach out. Again, Victoriahafford.com. And I have, I'm on all the socials. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram and Facebook. And I have a Facebook group called Manifest a joyful, sexy life. If you want to join me in there, I'd love to see you. So I hope this was helpful for you. I adore you. And remember, you are the universe.