Stress-Proof Your Life

What if you could stress-proof your life?

That would be pretty incredible, right?

Imagine keeping stress out and letting more love in.

Can you see yourself flowing through life, whistling as you walk, without a care in the world? Ahhh.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled program of how most of us experience our days.

Cut Out Comparison Programming

We interact with media numerous times a day. From that first check of social media before we leave the house to radio messages on the way home and commercials, magazine ads, and—you guessed it…more social media—this type of programming typically induces feelings of lack.

When our brains compare our lives to others and sense that we lack something, we have a natural bias toward negativity that makes our hormones and thoughts hold on to the gap and seek to close it.  

We experience feelings of anxiety and insecurity because we don’t have what the media or social media (our peers posting their most positive experiences) shows us we should have. Our brains focus on how to get what we seem to lack so that we can experience more security.

The truth is, your life is probably pretty darn great in terms of basic needs if you’re reading this post. Yet, our brains let go of the positive comparisons we make very quickly because they expose no threat to our ego.

Our intellects understand that beyond our basic human survival needs a sense of security and fulfillment fundamentally come from within us. Feeling secure comes from our individual perception of the world and an intangible knowingness of our spirits.

In order to stress-proof our lives, we have to learn how to cut negative thoughts and insecurities at their source by listening to our intuition and shifting our mental focus toward ease.

Why Anxiety is Linked to the Ego

If we step back from our anxiety and worry, we can acknowledge that it is produced because our personality—our ego—feels threatened in some way.

Some aspect of a given scenario invites us to project thoughts about a current or future lack of something. This something could be anything from less money in the bank, to losing a loved one, to being judged poorly for our performance.

Our ego has lots to say about these potential threats in terms of how we see ourselves right now. Usually, our ego wants to stay as it is because it is familiar with our behaviors and feels secure in forecasting a future based on what it believes are our permanent personality traits.

We experience anxiety when our ego senses that it will have to change.

If we are on a growth path in life, as I expect you are if you are reading this, there is only one way through life—fail, learn, course correct, and grow.

Stress-Proof Your Life using a Mindset Shift Technique

So how do we get rid of this anxiety that’s lurking in the background, always ready to take over at the slightest threat or rejection?

Recently, I experienced a couple of anxious days as I mulled over the statistics to reach the amazing people I’m ready to work with this year. I had calculations on the exact numbers I’d need to serve the people I know will benefit from my coaching.

You know what? It freaked me out. I felt deflated by the stats. They seemed impossible to meet, even with the support of a great team. I couldn’t see how I was going to reach these awesome people without depleting myself.

Then my coach pulled me out of the abyss with a simple mindset shift technique.

She invited me to reframe my intention. The way I was looking at it was from the anxious view of my ego. I was putting all of the “lack” on myself and focusing on a gap that I was magnifying by the minute.

While there is no doubt that I have to take action to produce results, the results of actions taken from a space of fear and insecurity will not produce secure results.

I had to look at working with my members not from my ego’s perspective of what I was going to do to get them to work with me, but from their perspective.

I needed to shift my focus on what would make it easy for them to get the results they wanted.

When I turned my attention and intention to their perspective, my ego didn’t have to be so scared and overwhelmed anymore. Not to mention that I felt more supported when I recognized that making these meaningful connections happen wasn’t all about me.

This shift in mindset involves a perspective of ease and invites me to see the outcome from a bigger, more deeply connected place.

Strategies to Deal with Insecurity—aka Confidence Boosters

Even with an awareness of how to shift our mindset, our ego will still invite us to live life from a stressful perspective because it uses fear and doubt to make choices.

You do, however, have another aspect of yourself that also makes choices—your intuition. In my experience, your intuition is essentially guidance from your soul. It uses your brain and your five senses and it taps into something beyond these physiological aspects of yourself.

I refer to this deeper aspect of ourselves as your soul. You may call it something different. The name is not as important as the experience of ease and integrity that comes when we are connected to it.

There are several ways to tap into your intuition to learn more about yourself and your insecurities so you can turn them into confidence boosters.

• Ask yourself, “How would I encourage a close friend or family member with the same insecurities?”

• Reframe: What would this look like if it were easy? Talk to a friend, or even to a wall, just verbalize it. Saying it out loud helps you restructure your thoughts and own this new perspective.

• Do a handwritten brain dump of your insecurities on one page, then write the opposite of each of these on another page. Shred the first page, post the second page to your nightstand, and read before falling asleep and first thing when you wake up.

• Limit time on social media and unconsciously watching or listening to news. When you do choose to engage in these platforms, remind yourself that all is well and any perceived lack or scarcity is coming from your ego’s reptilian brain.

Once you have become accustomed to shifting your mindset to a perspective of ease, you’ll take the pressure off yourself and your ego to perform. When you realize there is no reason to fear or to compare yourself to others, you can retrain your brain to listen to your soul and trust that life has your back. You’ll have confidence in the choices you make using your intuition and recognize when your ego’s fear or insecurity is attempting to make you view life through the lens of stress.

Now that you’ve got ways to stress-proof your life, put them into practice. Your brain needs practice to create new, positive neural pathways that light up an easeful approach to life.

Post a comment below and tell me which of these techniques you will practice this week to start moving your brain toward ease, connecting your heart with your intuition, and experiencing the benefits of stress-proofing your life.

Photo credit: Jon Tyson