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6steps To Eliminate Stress
6steps To Eliminate Stress
To Eliminate Stress
& Retake Control Of Your
Weight For Good
by Dr. Brian Walsh
Courtesy of www.yogafitnessflow.com
6 Steps To Eliminate Stress
& Retake Control Of Your Weight For Good
by Dr. Brian Walsh
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There are also different types of negative stress. You can have mental-emotional stress, where your
perception of a thing causes a physiological stress response in your body.
You can also have physical stress, where a physical stressor causes the same physiological internal
response as do mental-emotional stressors. You can have an infection, for example. You could eat
foods that you’re sensitive to, and that is a stress to your body.
We not going into physical stressors in detail in these lessons. Our focus is stress management, and
so we’ll talk primarily about the mental and emotional aspect of stress.
Mental-emotional stress is purely perception. We can sit here and talk about deep breathing
exercises all day long, or tai chi or yoga or any of those things. But, ultimately, stress is perception.
Your view of a thing causes a stress response to that thing.
So what’s the solution? We could try to manage the stress causing item itself, or we could go deeper
and try to manage the cause of that stress. The most direct cause of that stress is your perception
of the event.
Two people are on a roller coaster. One is gripping the bar and screaming for his life, having a stress
response, while the other feels exhilarated. Same roller coaster, two different responses.
Two people might smell the same smell, and one is reminded of their beautiful, compassionate, and
loving grandma, while the other thinks immediately of an ex-girlfriend and experiences a horrible
negative response.
Our perception of an event dictates our response to it. Understanding this is huge, because unless
you change your perception, all the deep breathing in the world won’t help. You will always
experience the same response to that particular trigger.
The action item I want you to focus on this week is simple in nature, but not necessarily easy. I would
like you to look at an event, big or small, and see if you can change your perception of that event. I
call this skill “recontextualizing.”
Take something on the news that seems like a bad situation, and see if you can recontextualize it as
a non-bad situation. Or maybe take a negative event that happened in your personal life, at work
or with your family. If you have a negative response to it, see if you’re able to recontextualize it in a
different way.
Everyone is always able to recontextualize a situation. It’s not necessarily easy, and it does take
practice, but it is a skill. I would like you to practice this as many times as you can. The better you
I’ll give you a couple quick examples of how this might work.
Let’s say your wife takes forever to get ready. Whenever you’re going anywhere,
you’re ready and waiting by the door on time, but she’s still
at least half an hour away.
Here’s another one. People often get upset when someone interrupts them. Instead of getting upset
that this guy just interrupted you, maybe you could think to yourself, “He’s just really excited to tell
me this.” And all of a sudden, it’s not so bad. You still don’t have to love being interrupted, but at the
same time it’s no longer a cause for anger.
I’ll be honest, it isn’t easy to change your perceptions. And I’ve seen a lot of upset, stress-out people
who have this capability of recontextualizing but they don’t use it.
Why? Because we’re so stuck in our own thinking that we fully believe we’re right. We’re not willing
to let go of that to look at something in a different way.
But if you CAN let that go and if you’re willing to try, you’ll find that stresses start melting away, and
you’re no longer upset about half the things you used to be.
1. You have to be aware of what your view of that thing is in the first place.
2. You have to be willing to admit that it’s possible for you to change that view.
It’s a skill, and it takes practice. Your reaction to something is purely subjective and is based on your view of it.
If you don’t like a situation and it stresses you out, you have two options. You can try to change the situation,
change the person or control the situation. Or you can change your perception of it.
The character Curly in the movie City Slickers said, “Do you know what the secret to life is? It’s just
one thing. You stick to that one thing and the rest of it doesn’t mean anything.” Today you’re going
to find that one thing inside of yourself.
You can’t know what you’re doing, where you’re going, or why you even do it at all until you figure
out what’s truly important to you.
How does this relate to stress management, you might ask? When you know what’s truly important
to you, you can evaluate your entire life — all the decisions, everything that’s around you — and get
rid of things that don’t fit.
There is no better or more effective stress management technique than figuring out your core
motivations, your core values, and your core drives. When you do that, everything else recontextualizes
itself naturally.
This exercise will take you about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. You’re going to have to sit back and
close your eyes, so if now isn’t a good time I encourage you to set this lesson aside and return to it
later in the day.
If you’re ready now, find somewhere comfortable to sit and go ahead and close your eyes. I want you
to picture your life as it is right now. Who you are, where you live, the things that you do, the people
you you spend time with, and the projects that you’re involved in.
Now imagine that you just found out you have one year to live. In exactly 365 days, you will cease
to exist. There will be no pain and no suffering involved in the remainder of your life, but one year
from now your time will be up.
Would you make any changes to your life? Do certain things that mattered to you no longer matter
anymore? What are you doing with yourself and your time? Who do you choose to spend that time
with?
Again, imagine what this life looks, smells, sounds and feels like. Add as many details as you can.
Next, imagine you just found out that you don’t have a year left to live but that you actually have
a month. In 30 days from today you will cease to exist. Your friends, family and loved ones will
continue on without you. There will be no pain and no suffering, but your time will be up and you
will be gone.
What does your life look like? How do you spend your time? Who do you spend it with? What are
you doing? Create this image in your head with as many details as you can. Again, who’s around
you? What are your thoughts? What’s important to you and what’s not important to you?
Next, you find out that you only have a week left. Seven days from now, your life will end and you
will no longer exist. What does your life look like? What do you do during those seven days? Who
Next, you find out that you only have one day left. In 24 hours from now your life will end and you
will cease to exist. What do you do? Who do you spend that day with? Where are you? What does
it sound like, smell like, and even taste like? What are your thoughts? What do you do in those last
remaining 24 hours?
Next, you find out that you only have one hour left. In 60 minutes from now, you will cease to exist.
Imagine that as though it were right now. Who’s around you? What do you talk about? What are you
thinking about? How do things look and smell and taste? What are you feeling?
Finally, if you were to focus on one area of your body right now where you could most fully
experience these things that you’re experiencing, where would it be? Imagine a ball of very white,
bright light surrounding that area. Thank your Self for allowing you to go through this process, and
slowly, whenever you’re ready, open your eyes.
Take a moment to write down your thoughts and feelings in your journal. You could also try drawing
whatever that core or center was that you surrounded in white light.
Ideally, this exercise helped you to figure out what is truly important to you in your life.
If you only had one hour left, what are the most important things, people, thoughts, and emotions
in your life. And if those are important, everything else is extraneous. Unimportant. Not even
something you want to spend much time thinking about.
For example, do you hit the roof when someone interrupts you
all the time, or when you’re fighting with a sibling over money,
or when you feel like you aren’t being heard? Are there one or
two specific things that always seem to set you off?
So, for example, if you don’t have enough money or you stress out about money, the issue is usually
deeper than that. It isn’t really about not having enough money.
If you’re unhappy about the relationship you’re in, the issue isn’t really the relationship or the
other person. There’s something else going on several layers down. And unless you change your
perception about these things, you’ll get stressed out about them again and again.
You might also find yourself getting stressed out about something which has the same core
underlying issue that shows up as an issue with money (or whatever your personal example was).
To fix this you must get to the core issue. Or, at the very least, understand that the thing you think
you have an issue with is really not the issue at all.
We’ll get at these deeper layers by using something I call The Then-What Exercise.
Here’s how it works. Anytime you find yourself stressed, unhappy, worrying about a situation,
frustrated, or annoyed — stop. Ask yourself, “Then what?”
Yeah, I know it sounds simplistic. But I promise you, if you do this you will quickly find out that some
of the things which are bothering you aren’t really about what you think they are. And that can be
tremendously empowering.
“I’m afraid my wife’s going to leave me.” All right, so she left you. Then what? “Well, then I’m afraid I’m
not going to see my kids.” All right, so you don’t see your kids anymore. Then what? “Well, I’m afraid
they’re not going to know who I am.” All right, so they don’t know who you are. And then what?
When you keep asking the “then what” question, one of two things will happen. You’ll get to the
core of an issue, which is fantastic. Or you’ll realize that whatever’s bothering you isn’t really about
that initial thing.
You’re not really afraid of losing your job, you’re more afraid of being embarrassed in front of your
family or friends because you no longer own your house, you’re in an apartment, you don’t have any
food on the table, etc.
Ultimately, it’s really about you. Your core issue. Can you recontextualize that? Can you look at that
situation in a different way so the core issue no longer bothers you, and you’re no longer afraid of
losing your job?
When you get to the real crux of these issues, you’ll find that you no longer get stressed out by the
situations that used to drive you buggy. That, to me, is truly stress management.
You also learned the core priority exercise, and how to find out
what’s truly important to you.
Sometimes you practice recontextualizing, you figure out your core priorities, and you try to get to
the bottom of an issue, but you still can’t get over it.
That’s the reality, and I’ll tell you it’s totally fine. Until we become enlightened, this is the way most
of us will deal with stress on a daily basis.
The next action item in your stress management arsenal is a question I call “Could you, would you,
when?”
This technique comes from a process called the Sedona Method, and it’s a very effective trick for
letting things go.
Let’s say your boss just yelled at you and it really bothered you. Step one is to ask yourself, “Could
I get over what happened today?” It’s a yes or no answer. There’s no maybe, and there’s nothing in
between. Just could you, or are you capable of, getting over this.
Next, ask yourself, “Would I get over what happened at work today?” If you’re honest with yourself,
you’ll realize that most people can probably get over these things.
Finally, the last question is, “When?” Having done this process many times, in most cases you basically
say, “You know what? I totally could get over this. Not right now, but I could.”
That being said, sometimes the answer to “when” is specific. So, to return to our example, your boss
just yelled at you. Could you get over it? Yes. Would you get over it? Yes. When? “Well, when he
apologizes.”
That’s a legitimate answer, and it’s progress because you’ve actually created some
parameters around it. You know that you could and would let it go, but you’re
going to wait for an apology first.
You can have negative plasticity, which involves the regular firing of negative emotions and anger,
or you can have positive plasticity, that of peacefulness and contentedness and not getting upset
over stressful situations.
In which area would you like to make those plastic changes to your brain? Obviously in the happy
one.
The good news is, with practice you can make certain pathways fire so often and so regularly that
they become so plastic that nothing really bothers you in the same way anymore.
How?
Through meditation.
I’m not talking about the spiritual aspect of meditation here. The changes I’m describing are
physiological. And they’ve been measured.
Studies have found that people who meditate show increases in creativity, intelligence, the ability
to solve problems, the ability to focus, orderliness of brain functioning, the ability to process
information, and more.
Meditation has also been found to positively affect certain markers in the blood, such as cholesterol,
blood pressure, and stress hormones.
This isn’t just people who have meditated for decades. New meditators have shown increased
productivity in just eight weeks!
Despite what you may have heard, there’s no one right way to meditate. There are nearly as many
methods and techniques as there are meditators who practice them. In this chapter we’ll cover
some very basic, fundamental stuff.
Start with five minutes a day. Everybody has five minutes a day to sit quietly, close your eyes, and just
watch your breath. And that’s basically all you do.
Start by sitting for five minutes, morning, noon, or night, in your office, in your car, or in a park. It
doesn’t matter where. Just sit quietly with no distractions.
Close your eyes, get into a comfortable position, and watch your breath. You’ll probably find that
your thoughts wander. No problem. Just go back to watching your breath again. Within five minutes
your thoughts will probably wander again. Keep coming back to your breath. Inhale, exhale, and
don’t get frustrated or judge anything.
The first time you do it, you might be able to watch your breath for 30 seconds before having a
thought that’s not related to your breath. After a while you’ll be able to go a minute without a
thought, and then two minutes, and then three minutes, and then five minutes.
The last thing I want to say is that meditation is great, but you have to
remove yourself from distractions in order to do it. And that’s fine,
but life doesn’t happen without distractions.
An imbalance in any of these neurotransmitters can cause difficulty with maintaining a healthy
perception, and thus poor stress management. Performing some of the previous exercises in this
module may have been extremely challenging for a person in this situation.
This is a very complex issue, even for professionals who know what they’re doing. Just to give
you one example, all the different hormones in the body can impact neurotransmitters, and
neurotransmitters can also impact those hormones.
So when I see someone who has low serotonin or low serotonin symptoms, I have to ask myself, is it
organic, meaning is it something that’s just true to them? Is it a neurological issue, or is it something
peripheral, meaning is there something else in their system, like a blood sugar issue or a hormonal
imbalance, that’s actually causing the low serotonin?
I need to talk about these things so you’re aware of them, but ultimately it’s a very very complex
issue, and beyond the scope of this book. You should use the information you learn in this section
to help you find a health care practitioner who is qualified to treat your case.
We’ll go through a few of the neurotransmitters, and I’ll ask you a series of questions. I want you to
answer either yes or no. I also want you to indicate if it’s a strong yes or a strong no. On a scale of one
to five, a five would be a very strong yes, and a one would would be a very low yes. Zero represents
no.
Do you feel you lack artistic expression? Do you feel depressed in overcast weather? Are you losing
your enthusiasm for your favorite activities? Are you losing enjoyment for your favorite foods? Are
you losing your enjoyment with friends and relationships? Do you have difficulty falling into a deep
restful sleep? Do you have a feeling of dependency on others? Do you feel more susceptible to pain?
Serotonin is involved with pain stimuli in the body. Do you have feelings of unprovoked anger? And,
are you losing interest in life?
If that sounds like you, then you may be experiencing issues with serotonin.
Next, we’ll look at dopamine. Do you have feelings of hopelessness? And again, I mean a sort of
apathy, hopelessness, and self-destructive thoughts. Do you have an inability to handle stress? Do
you feel anger and aggression while under stress? Do you feel like you’re not rested even after a
long sleep? Do you prefer to isolate yourself from others? Do have an unexplained lack of concern
for family or friends? Are you distracted easily? Are you unable to finish tasks? Are you experiencing
decreased libido? Do you feel a need to consume caffeine to stay alert? Do you lose your temper
for minor reasons? Do you have feelings of worthlessness? These things are usually indicative of a
significant dopamine deficiency.
Lastly, we’ll look at GABA. Do you feel anxious or panicked for no reason? Do you have feelings of dread
or pending gloom? Do you feel knots in your stomach? Do you have feelings of being overwhelmed
for no reason? Do you have feelings of guilt about everyday decisions? Does your mind feel restless?
If you scored high in any one of — or maybe even all of — those categories, you may have a
neurotransmitter issue.
Neurotransmitter deficiencies can interfere with your ability to concentrate, to be happy, and to
maintain a positive outlook on life. You could do all the exercises in the previous lessons over and
over, but they may not work for you.
At that point, you should seek the help of a medical professional. The questions I posed above were
meant to help you decide if you might be dealing with an underlying physiological cause. So let’s
put it all together and sum up our approach to stress management.
First, understand that mental-emotional stress is perception, and that you need to follow the
exercises found in the previous videos to help improve your perception, awareness , your ability
to manage mental-emotional stress, et cetera. If you’ve worked diligently with these exercises but
you’re still not getting anywhere — or if you’re not able to summon the concentration and will to do
them at all — consider seeking the advice of a qualified medical professional for advanced testing
and nutrition.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this stress control book, and I hope you’re already enjoying less stress in your
life.
Thank you for spending this time with me. Please feel free to drop me a line if you have questions,
or simply to let me know how you did with it. I’d be happy to hear from you.
You can learn more about him, his practice and his projects at www.drbryanpwalsh.com or
www.rescuemyhealth.com.