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Studies routinely find that the greatest source of stress that people experience is related to occupational and financial well-being. So what's your satisfaction with these areas of your life? Are you in search of enough or content? So many people are looking for enough.

The career in financial security to have enough money for the future, for the retirement, enough praise and recognition for being responsible and hard-working, enough success at work to be picked over the competition for the next promotion or high visibility project, enough social success to be respected in the community to keep up with the Joneses, enough financial blessing to have a large house and yard and fancy vacations or name brand clothing.

Any of those could be what you define as the next milestone that you're chasing after. It may end up coming up to you as my family and I will be happy when this next milestone occurs and then the next and the next and you're constantly chasing happiness and being stressed out that you've not yet achieved whatever is that shiny object that you're going after. So I just ask you, how much is the quest for enough leading to keeping overly busy at work, seeing everything is work-related, proving yourself by working harder and longer hours, worrying about work all the time, being controlling to ensure your success, neglecting your health, relationships and spirituality so you can get ahead at work and financially? So is this quest for enough at the root of the imbalance that you feel between work and the rest of your life? Has this hectic busy pace left you wondering, is this all that there is and how my life needs to be? Let's start with prayer.

Lord, thank you for bringing my dear friends to listen today. Modern society wants us to define success based on career and financial outcomes. But that's not the only way. That's not your way. Help us overcome the fears of scarcity holding us back from embracing your view of a successful life. Let us praise the abundance and blessings you've shown us already and see how we can reduce stress by stopping the chase for enough and relaxing into your grace with surrender and trust.

I pray that you can help every listener achieve their goals to be healthy in body, renewed in mind, and strong in spirit. As they reduce stress and improve work-life balance, may they know your will and your love. In Jesus's name, amen.

(2:49 - 2:59)

Hi, I'm Sharon McCall with Whispering Fields Wellness. When I was in my corporate career, I've been where you are. A lot of stress, yet very high job and career satisfaction.

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And usually I really like the company I worked for. The few times I changed companies, it took an enormous amount of consideration and personal reasons for change. Through all of these different assignments, work was often consistently and constantly in my thoughts.

The only friendships I had were through work. So even friendly get-togethers, they often sounded more like work-sponsored happy hour than just friends coming together to enjoy a little bit of time. Even though my work was high pressure and stressful, I was deeply committed to my career goals and always trying to ensure that I had enough for my loved ones so I could avoid the soup kitchen lines when we're in our 70s and 80s.

Even though I was always worried about the what if, my only financial issues were what I jokingly called my champagne problems. What is the best long-term investment? Diversifying IRAs, 401ks, flipping, renting, selling investment properties. Not serious concerns.

These were all, like I said, I recognized that they were champagne problems, but they were still causing me no end of stress as I tried to avoid this worst case scenario of a soup kitchen when I was older. Work was my life for such a long time, I just didn't even notice how imbalanced I was. Once I figured this out and realized that I needed to improve my work-life balance and to reduce my stress, it was a little hard.

I didn't know how to approach it without sacrificing the career success that I had. I really truly thought that the hours that I worked was tied directly to my career success. Once I realized that they weren't and I could still be successful, be less stressed, and have more work-life balance, more time at home, it just completely changed everything for me.

This is why I'm so passionate about stress recovery coaching. It makes things so much better for you, your family, your loved ones, your downline, the people that you work with. I want to make sure that you have an easier path to reduce stress and improve work-life balance than I did.

Today I'm going to talk about the wellness toolbox topics of financial and occupational well-being. These wellness toolbox episodes help you define for yourself what work-life balance really is and identify some elements for you in your stress management plan. Today's really geared around journaling and introspection on your relationship with work.

I believe you won't be able to improve work-life balance without truly understanding why work has become such a major stronghold for you. It can be hard to shift as life changes and work now has to become a second priority or maybe an equal priority to something else that is an increasing priority in your life. So let's say your child's getting older.

They're asking for more of your time. You want to be there to help them with their homework. So some of these types of events really bring about significant changes in the way that you view work and the relationship with work that you have.

So on this slide you'll find the distinction between burnout and stress. There are two clear definitions from this and I think it's important as we talk about occupational well-being to be clear on which side of the spectrum that you find yourself upon. So read through these and I'm going to ask a couple of questions to help you identify where you are.

Both of these occur when there's a lot of pressure and tension at work. I often find that the primary distinction between stress and burnout is engagement and satisfaction. Motivation drops with burnout but with stress you can still feel fulfilled by your career choices.

(7:01 - 11:40)

You're still highly engaged, feeling enriched, and driven even though you are exhausted. Whereas in burnout you're asking yourself what's the point and why bother? Your motivation is so low and so your exhaustion is driven by two different factors depending on whether you're stressed or you're burned out. So to help you go deeper into this idea I have a handful of questions for you.

Please bring out a sheet of paper and pen and jot down some of your notes and feel free to pause with each question to give yourself a moment to write things down. So the first one, what do you feel Sunday night or Monday morning as you contemplate going back to work? There was one of my key role changes. I just felt ill Sunday night as I was contemplating going to work the next day.

That was the key to me to finally changing roles. I think that was the only time I did that because I realized the role was not suiting me and I needed to find something else. So going into the next question, so what makes you motivated to go into work? Is your career a means of a paycheck, a standard of living, or does it have greater meaning? When you look at your career does it align with your life goals or your greater life purpose? How do you serve others in your current career or role? As a Christian this idea of service may be very important to you and something that you hold dear.

So hopefully those questions give you a better idea on where on the spectrum between burnout and stress that you fall. When you're so busy reaching for the future to have enough or the under the self-imposed pressure of not being enough, it's really key to understand where you are because the resolutions are different on these. Burnout, so often the resolution is a different role or organization or some other shift in lifestyle that restores motivation, something that infuses meaning and hope.

Maybe it's you stay in the same role and you can find your motivation because you're reframing it. I've done this before when I thought that the organization and the role wasn't right for me and then I sat back and I reframed it so that I found greater motivation. So maybe that's an activity that you can do to help reduce the stress that you feel because so much of that stress is just really coming that you're no longer motivated to to do the work.

Whereas when you're looking at chronic stress the resolution is lies more in changing the view of the work situations and your personal relationship with work. Both burnout and stress they benefit by resilience building and basic stress relief, calming exercises to soothe and calm. So with today's discussion of occupational well-being I find that this distinction between stress and burnout is really important.

Many of you are stressed yet with have high career satisfaction so need to look further than motivation and purpose. Whereas if you're burned out you just need to deep dive more into motivation and purpose and that should get you to resolution on what you're facing. And stress becomes really dangerous long term when it interferes with your ability to live a normal life for an extended period of time.

This is why everybody's so concerned about how stress fuels inflammation and disease. Burnout's not the same thing. You may just be unmotivated but stress it can have real ramifications on your life long term.

So that's the first thing that we're going to talk about today in regards to financial and occupational well-being. Moving into the next topic, success. So what measurements do you use to assess success in your life? Let's say that three times fast. Assess your success, assess your success, assess your success. What does success success mean to you? Is it the bigger house, the large bank accounts, fancy vacations, brand label clothing, shoes? I touched on a number of these different types of things earlier in the discussion identifying what enough means. Some people that I've met felt that success is really based on if the career sufficiently supports having a fulfilling life outside of work.

(11:40 - 18:27)

At different stages in my life success had different meanings and it may be the same for you. I've also realized that your definition of success it gets really strongly into your view of scarcity and abundance. So we're going to run through a couple of questions just like we did in the last one.

So grab that pen and paper and let's do some journaling again. So how aligned is your career to with who you are as a spiritual being as a Christian? How does it fit with your values? How are you acting upon God's purpose and plan for you? Does your work offer personal satisfaction and stimulation and allow you to contribute your talents, gifts, and knowledge? How can you reclaim more of your personal power? How do you serve and solve problems that impact other people? So instead of just thinking about the company's bottom line, how are you serving other people inside the organization, your customers, your clients, anybody that you're interacting with? How do you have fun at work? Hopefully these give you a few more ideas of digging into where your strengths are and where you're connecting with work because these are ways to help alleviate some of that stress as you're looking to define success based upon satisfaction and stimulation and enjoyment, impact to others, having fun versus having a definition of success that's based upon material things or bank accounts. As I was researching this topic over the years, I found a biblical view of success that I'd like to share.

It's about following your personal truth each day, not a delivery of outcomes. To stay with this, I do recognize that sometimes I have challenges with this myself. I get so hung up in the outcomes of what I want to have happen versus staying centered in that personal truth of each day.

I think this is one of those things that you can do as you're growing as a Christian, to being able to sit in that space of personal truth in that relationship with God. So using this approach for reframing, is there a way to remove the fear of failure or feelings of powerlessness or any self-doubt you have in your abilities that might be contributing to your stress? So if you're in that personal truth, how does that empower you and reduce the perception that things are hard, that things are difficult, that you can't, because that's really what stress is. It's all of those beliefs that are holding you back from being able to sit in God's power.

All of these different things, the fear of failure, powerlessness, self-doubt, these are ways that we cope with the pain of having lost our sense of being and not feeling good enough in who we are, that we need to go and chase our worth outside in outcomes. And so overscheduling our lives with activities, with this pursuit of other things, it's how we run from ourselves. We keep busy to blot out our feelings and to feel and that our worth is reflected in all of these outcomes, all of these things that we bring in.

Our relationships are defined less by that connection and more by what do we do and give to others. This is what I find is at the root of so much chronic stress. It's that tension in your being and that recognition of that self-worth.

As we move into the third topic today, how does this view of success influence how you define work-life balance? How does your job inform your identity? What is a more empowering story to tell about your career? So as you sit in your personal truth, as you stay connected with God and you take a look at all the gifts that you've been given in your life, all the blessings and the ways that you're able to serve others, how can that help you tell a more empowering story, a different view of the work that you do? Let me share a story because this for me, as I recast this story and I reframe my mindset, it helped me to reduce the stress that I was feeling in the specific roles. So on this particular role, I was so frustrated because my boss said my contributions filled in the cracks. It felt like a throwaway comment and I was so mad.

He truly meant it as a compliment and it took me a long time to get there because he repeated it a couple times. But personally, I felt devalued. It caused so much tension in my relationship with my boss and I started to take on even more projects to prove that I had greater value than just filling in the cracks.

And this increased the stress and the pressure that I put on myself because I couldn't take the way that he was describing the value I added to the organization. So spending a lot of time down at the beach and a lot of journaling and rethinking, do I need to change my job? Do I need to go apply for a different position in the company? What do I need to do? I realized that I just needed to reframe and reclaim filling the cracks. And so I took the viewpoint that as a process engineer, that I was kind of like public safety and fixing the sidewalks and roadways, fixing those trip hazards of when the sidewalk had split apart or that it was the root was breaking it or filling in potholes or things were really starting to fall apart.

Because honestly, that was really, truly what I did as a process engineer. When things were broken, I'd get called and I needed to go and fix them and to make sure that things didn't get worse. And as I was able to adopt that public safety view, I recognized that there was actually a freedom that came from being from this.

(18:27 - 28:03)

I was able to identify the hazards on my own. Nobody was telling me where the cracks were. Nobody was telling me where the potholes were that needed to get done.

It was up to me to find them. So having the freedom to go out and identify what organizational pain points, inefficient processes, productivity issues were going on, listening to the people on the floor and being an advocate for them to get long-standing problems addressed. I was able to put this all together into a business justification in regards to how to solve these problems, which would then benefit other people, benefit the people that were also purchasing our products because we were able to make them more efficiently.

And so it helped me take that attitude of service, that whole public safety viewpoint, where I could focus just on the benefits of those issues. So I was really proud then to be the fill-in-the-cracks girl because I was able to identify the freedom that came with that and own and re-empower that for myself. So what's an empowering story that you can tell yourself about your career to help you feel greater purpose, to put things in perspective so there's a lot less self-imposed pressure, so that you're not chasing impossible standards for perfectionism, so that you're not chasing whatever is that next thing that's just over the hill that's preventing you from being content and feeling like you don't have enough.

So getting into the exercise for today, we're going to pull all of these different questions and the answers that you wrote down together so that you've got something that makes sense and can help you with any changes that you want to make in your life so you can reduce stress and improve work-life balance. So we're going to go through another identity exercise. This is recognize God's plans for you.

So when you start with your identity in Christ, what does it mean for you to flourish and thrive, to be successful? Who do you want to be related to the goals that you have, to have and be enough? God's word gives us so many inspiring ways to frame our lives as God calls us closer to him. So what you want to do in this part is to find a Bible verse that really resonates with you and the changes that you want in your life as it comes to work-life harmony and success. With this biblical grounding, it gives you that focus that's so much stronger and more powerful than just focusing on the outcomes.

Having this completely God-powered instead of will-powered driven, it gives you that clear focus and direction for the changes. So a couple of examples of things that I've pulled out or had other people work with. Precious and beloved child of God.

That's my particular favorite. A godly parent and pride of your children. Do everything with love.

Be a loving partner with a marriage held in honor above all. A family that loves each other deeply. Bless and honor your parents.

Find satisfaction and toil and happiness in life. That's a very work-life balance-y one that someone's used very successfully. So just flip through the Bible or using an internet tool.

Figure out what is that right and inspiring verse that really holds for you and ties to your Christian identity and all the goals that you have. What is that plan that God has for you that only you can do in your life as part of his bigger plan? So once you've got that statement, that gives you that true north, that navigating point for anything that you need to do. So whenever you're stuck in priorities, come back to this statement and then identify does working late, missing my child's game, skipping being so tired that I can't do date night.

It helps you to prioritize these. You get an entire different perspective every time you come back to this identity and ask, what is the right behavior that I need to do? And you pray with God and ask him for his guidance and his strength to help you do the right thing in this moment as you're seeking to improve, to take the right action whenever you're under so much stress. So the second part of this then, once you've got that identity statement, we want to build out this vision of thriving and flourishing.

What does work-life balance, work-life harmony mean to you? What does a life with less stress mean to you? Because it's going to mean something different to every single one of you that's watching this. So what does that vision look like? So we've gone through all of the different wellness toolbox topics over the last 13 weeks and pulled out a couple of different ideas for your stress management plan. So how do you put all of these together into a singular vision so that you've got that clarity in mind? So just like at work and you're always putting together, starting with the vision and then working out your strategy and the tactics that you need to, it's the same type of thing you want to do in your personal life.

And as you put this vision together, it'll help you also get greater clarity on where you need to divert some time and energy away from work toward activities and relationships that really enhance your self-sense of well-being. So we're going to map out what this means to you. We're going to come back to this Venn diagram type model that we've talked about before, where there's a section for body, for mind, for spirit, and it's all anchored on Holy Spirit in the center.

And you're going to go through and you're going to fill in on your sheet of paper just what does this future state look like for you to take a look at? And then what does that mean for you at work? So as you're looking at your occupational and your financial well-being, how does that need to change for you going into the future? These are very touchy-feely activities this week. I hope you've enjoyed them. They really are designed for that introspection to get into what it is that you really want with your career and how are some of these things in your relationship with work that's preventing you from living that fulfilling life that you want? How are some of the things in your relationship with work that's creating that stress and that tension that's bleeding out into other areas of your life? So I hope this gave you a few insights on where to get started with making changes.

Any questions on today's exercise, please email Sharon@whisperingfieldswellness.com. I'd love to hear if you've had any epiphanies or anything came up as you work through these exercises and questions as well. I know today was very high level and we went through a lot of ground. Most of this is just something for you to sit down with your journal and God and a little bit of prayer and figure out what does this mean for me? Hopefully this can help you get unstuck with some of the changes that you're trying to make to improve work-life balance and to reduce stress.

Next week I'll discuss how to reinforce work-life boundaries through your work habits to allow you to have more content and calm and be able to have more time and energy to spend with loved ones, yourself, and on interests that you hold dear. Today I reviewed financial and occupational well-being and how your view of success influences work-life balance. With today's exercise on updating your definition of success to be more biblically based, I pray that this helps you tap into God power instead of willpower to make the changes that you desire in your relationship with work.

I hope this gives you plenty of ideas for your stress management plan as you are DIYing your stress recovery journey. I pray that you are creating the changes that you want in your life to be less stressed and have more work-life balance. Everything I covered today can be implemented in your life through faith-driven tiny habits.

If you're looking for more, check the link below. Start today and when you can't, just remember God can if you let him. Want to take this idea further and implement changes in your life? Download the free worksheets that I have.

Start implementing simple and practical habits to reduce stress, improve energy and focus, and reclaim your time. You can be started in five minutes or less. It's that simple and easy.

If you've already experimented with these DIY tools and are interested in working with me, I can help you to go deeper and farther in your stress recovery journey with personalized coaching and support. Click below to see the links and get started. See you next episode.

Have a blessed day!

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Are you drained with brain fog? Strung out with caffeine and sugar to get by? There are alternatives to boost your energy and concentration naturally and still have the convenience demanded by your hectic and busy life. Cultivate grit and build resilience naturally so you can have the physical reserves to better cope with stress. Let's see how close I am to understanding your current choices.

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I meet many people that fit this general profile. Less than six hours of sleep, caffeine and sugar to push through the exhaustion, and acids and aspirin to get through other discomforts. A little bit of alcohol, maybe a half a bottle or more of wine to wind down and sleep aids.

Breakfast is to go eaten standing in the kitchen, in the car, or at the desk. Convenience and easy to eat is the top priority. Lunch, sometimes you skip it because there's usually not enough time or it's partially eaten while you're working.

So dinner really is the main meal of the day and often later in the evening based upon your busy work schedule. You sit most of the day and probably don't have a lot of time for exercise because you're working 12 plus hours. This sound about right? Does that sound like you? So when you're drained and exhausted and all that's going on in your life, it really won't take all that much to begin feeling differently.

Just a little bit more sleep, more water, whole foods, a bit of stretching, slowing down to chew instead of gulping your food. It'll make a significant difference. Trust me.

So today let's go over a few simple substitutions that you can make in your eating patterns and how to improve your nighttime routines with small adjustments to get better sleep. So before I jump into that, let's go ahead and start with prayer. Lord, thank you for bringing my dear friends to listen today.

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A demanding and stressful career and a hectic and busy lifestyle have stressed and stretched my friend too far. Please help them ease their stress and cast their burdens on you. Provide the strength and energy for them to adopt small changes so they can feel better, enabling them to have a more fulfilling life.

I pray you can help every listener achieve their goals to be healthy in body, renewed in mind, and strong in spirit. As they reduce stress and improve work-life balance, may they know your will and your love. In Jesus's name, amen.

(2:31 - 4:04)

Hi, I'm Sharon McCall with Whispering Fields Wellness. So great to meet you today. Early in my corporate career, I'd been where you are, figuring out how to naturally boost my energy and offset digestive discomfort from chronic stress.

Honestly, I was drinking more coffee and wine than water. Skipping meals was a regular thing because I just didn't have the time for it, or just grabbing a bite whenever it was convenient, just so I could squeeze in more work. It was just a way of life for me at the time.

Short nights with restless sleep left me waking exhausted and dragging the next day, which meant more coffee and more stomach irritation from not eating. It was just an ongoing cycle. So eventually, with my passion for nutrition and holistic wellness, I figured out a way and learned even more along that journey that I want to share with others now as a stress recovery coach.

So today's topic is one of my favorites. It's about how to build those inner reserves so that you have the grit, the resilience to handle whatever comes your way. And it's one of my favorite topics.

In the interest of time though, today I'm just going to keep it to water, whole foods, sleep, and then we'll go through an exercise at the end like we normally do. Because there are so many different ways to make minor changes to naturally boost energy and improve concentration. So we're just going to keep this to physical activities, things you consume, and things that you can do in today's discussion.

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But building reserves is a key way to better deal with stress. So last time, you may remember, we talked a little bit about halt. That when you're feeling any of these four things, hungry, angry, or anxious, lonely, or tired, it just makes everything so much more stressful.

You just, that emotional state that you're in, it just makes you so much more susceptible to stress. So if you aren't hangry and you're not tired, you're going to naturally feel that you're less stressed because you've got more capabilities internally to deal with it. So your body's less likely to get triggered in that stress response.

So some of these things then are, of course, sleep and hydration, whole foods, caffeine and sugar really play into the stress cycle. So you want to reduce those. Focusing on eating habits that aren't rushed and bad for your digestion and building energy and slowing down enough to make sure that they're helping you.

(5:02 - 13:20)

Getting enough movement. It doesn't necessarily have to be exercise, but just moving your body more than you currently are with as sedentary as you are with work. Getting some sunshine.

It really makes a big difference to sleep and it naturally boosts up your energy, just getting that little bit of sun. It allows your body to naturally produce some of the vitamins it needs. And then getting some breaks and rest.

It's really not a lot of different things that comes with building your physical energy reserves. And all it takes is just a couple of small adjustments to improve concentration and to boost energy. So as you think about it, you, like many people, probably already know what is the next step on the spectrum of better for you.

You just need to implement it. So maybe some of you have already made some small steps. We've talked a little bit about the snack drawer before, someplace convenient in your office that you've put in some different snacks just to make sure that they're there, they're convenient so that you eat.

You just need to make sure that it's not full of just candy bars, that you've got some protein, fiber, meal replacement bars, some things with some broader nutrition portfolio than your typical quick, convenient snack, like a bag of potato chips or a candy bar or a bag of cookies. Just making that small change can make a huge difference because it helps start to take you off that energy roller coaster as you're picking some of those things out. And DoorDash these days, honestly, has opened up so many convenient food delivery options that maybe you're already picking some healthy and better for you items to be delivered to the office.

So you're not living off of whatever's in the vending machine, which is pretty convenient when I was at the worst of my stress, to give you many more healthy, convenient lunch options. And we're just looking for better for you, whatever is that next tiny step. So maybe you've done some of those already.

And then, or maybe you've picked frozen food and you're bringing in one of these little frozen meals. Don't know about you, but when I tried that for a while, that just didn't work because I couldn't find the time to get to the microwave. And let me tell you, thawed out, cold, frozen meals, no.

Those are horrible. Just don't do it. So if you do do that path, just make sure you actually get to the microwave and don't try and compromise and just eat it because it was convenient.

So, but for purposes of today's discussion, I'm just going to keep working with the scenario that I described earlier, where you're getting very little sleep, you're working 12 hours of a day, you're roughly spending about two of your hours prepping for your day. You think about it, you probably got a 30 minute morning routine from the time that you get up to when you get to your desk or you get to your car, depending on whether you're commuting or not. Dinner, you're making it, eating it, super short period of time, and just running the household stuff that takes about two hours.

And that running the household stuff includes things like your coffee prep, your plan for dinner, laying out your clothes, if you're bringing lunch, prepping it, following up on any personal business or communications, which just leaves you then three, four hours of discretionary time for loved ones and yourself, depending on your commute. So the reason you probably found me is because this lifestyle, it just doesn't, it's not conducive to work life balance. In that little bit of three to four hours a day, you're just not getting a fulfilling life.

Yet you're exhausted because of everything that you've got going on and that you're constantly on the run. So with these time constraints, boosting your energy may seem very difficult. But today we're going to focus on how you can do this and still stay as busy and hectic and crazy of a lifestyle that you currently have, and let you deal with making choices so that you can improve your energy while you're working on figuring out how you're going to end up reclaiming your time so you can have more family time and more balance.

So these strategies we're going to cover today are really just all about building those physical reserves and doing those immediate short-term wins to boost energy and to improve concentration just to get rid of some of that brain fog that comes with the exhaustion. So the first thing I want to kind of cover is cut the crap. C-R-A-P.

That's my secret to helping you cultivate grit, boost energy, and improve concentration. So let's go over what the crap is. C is for caffeine.

R is for refined sweeteners, flours, and starches. All of these things get you on an energy roller coaster. Alcohol, because often many of you as you're really stressed out and exhausted, you get so wired with everything that's going on and that high pace that your life is that you find yourself drinking a lot of alcohol in the evening, which negatively impacts your ability to get sleep.

And then the P is processed GMO seed oils. So these are like the generic vegetable oil, cottonseed, corn, canola, rapeseed, etc. You probably aren't reading labels, which is fine.

That is one of the things though that makes a long-term difference. It is a little more of an advanced item, and I'm not really going to get into that. Another bonus area that you can take a look at if reading labels is kind of up your alley is getting rid of artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners.

A lot of these artificial colors, for people that are sensitive to them, they trigger ADHD-like symptoms. And so they feed into that stress and that I'm constantly moving and worrying and in that cycle from that standpoint. So that may be one of those things, just as you continue on this journey, that you might need to take a look at cutting as you're looking to boost your energy and to reduce your stress and improve work-life harmony.

But we're going to keep this simple today and really focus on the highest impact, which is water and just focusing on whole foods. That way you don't have to focus on any label reading whatsoever. Well, maybe a little bit on the sugar part, but that's a really easy one to do a direct comparison on.

So why start there? You want to avoid the hangry, just not get hungry and angry, and make sure that you can get off that energy roller coaster. Because every time you have something sugary and caffeine, your energy, it peaks up, but then that crash that follows and it seems like it almost takes more sugar, more caffeine to get you back to normal so that you can continue on with your day. And that gets compounded when you're not taking your breaks and allowing your body to reset naturally as you go through the your energy ebbs and flows through the course of the day.

So the first thing you want to do is focus on water because dehydration feeds into all of this. So many times you get a hungry signal and it's actually you need some water. Sometimes you're feeling really down and your energy's low, you need some water because you're pushing on dehydration.

So to be properly hydrated, some estimate that you take your body weight, you divide it by two, and you have that many ounces of water, and that's enough to keep you hydrated. But to stay hydrated, it really all depends on what your other consumption patterns are. Every glass of alcohol, caffeine, it increases your water content that you need to have to properly flush these things through your system.

So it's really easy to get dehydrated if you're not focusing on regularly drinking your glass of water and having it right near you. There's a point in time when seriously I was drinking more coffee than anything else and then probably in the course of the day I was only drinking maybe a total of 64 ounces and almost none of that was water. It was like 30 to 40 ounces of coffee, a couple glasses of wine, and maybe one glass of water in the morning and at night.

So I was running dehydrated and I could feel how exhausted I was. I kept taking more and more caffeine because of how tired I was. I didn't realize it was dehydration until I started having some other issues.

(13:22 - 14:35)

As I ended up deciding to make improvements on this, just slowly switching out anything after 1 p.m. started to make a big difference for me, going to the half-calf, going to decaf, diluting the coffee with water, making water more accessible. So I didn't necessarily feel that I was making big changes but just slowly incorporating more water in the course of the day and my access to it and reducing the caffeine. Switching out teas, all of these had huge benefits on my exhaustion and brain fog.

It can be really hard to reduce the caffeine because of how tired you are and your body also gets accustomed to really high levels of it and can create a dependency on it, which is why when you may have ever tried to cut caffeine before you get big headaches and you feel terrible and you just go ahead and just pick up the coffee again. So you might need to find alternatives to help you keep your energy up, particularly as you're slowly weaning yourself off of caffeine and finding other beverages that better suit and keep your energy up. So for example, you might want to try a B-complex vitamin.

(14:36 - 16:04)

Getting that natural boost from this supplement can help you feel a lot more energy. B12, a lot of these other B vitamins that are necessary for your metabolism so it can work more optimally. So it's a really simple, easy way to boost your energy.

And it's really easy to tell if you're getting the right amount of B vitamins. So if you take a B vitamin and you're drinking water with your B vitamin, you'll feel better about it. But as soon as you're done using it because it's a water-soluble vitamin, you're going to piss it out.

So if you're regularly finding that right after you take a B vitamin, you are overly yellow to say that you're taking more B vitamin than you need to and you can cut it back and dial it back in. But if you're getting clear, it means your body's using all of the B vitamins and you can end up increasing your dosage. So just a quick way to identify another means of boosting your energy as you're weaning yourself off of caffeine and helping to get your body into a better spot.

And this is not something that's going to make a significant difference on your busy and hectic life. So moving into the next topic. So once you get yourself fully hydrated and switch up your beverages so that they're helping you, you want to take a look at whole foods.

So for whole foods, just keep it really simple. Whole foods, I mean things that look like produce. So fruit, dried fruit, nuts.

(16:06 - 19:43)

Find foods that still look like foods that aren't completely processed in a factory. And you'll find that there's less additives in it and less crud that keeps you feeling slow and weighs you down. So an easy thing to tackle is if you have that snack drawer that you've maintained for any of these convenience items, like we talked about before even, is pick things that have less sugar in them.

So even if you normally have a whole thing of Snickers bars in there, well it's pretty easy to get a slightly better for you option than the Snickers bars. So just slowly change your grocery shopping habits to include items that have less sugar and more fiber in them and it will help you maintain a better control of your blood sugar. Actually eating breakfast and lunch will really help you too.

Even if you are having higher quantities of sugar, the protein, the fat, the fiber that you get with a well-rounded meal helps even out those highs and those lows. Not that you want to stay on those high levels of sugar that you're probably consuming right now, but it helps to buffer them if you have proper proteins, fats, and fibers to make it so that you're not getting these huge swings. Another super simple way to boost your energy with your food is actually to focus on eating it and slowing down.

You may not realize it, but your digestion is tied to your senses. Your brain and your gut are both required to digest food. So when you slow down and you can smell it and you can enjoy the taste of it and you chew it down to small enough pieces and enjoy the full sensation of eating, you also digest better.

So instead of feeling like a rock sitting in your stomach or because your digestion is not working as well since you're in a stress mode, it allows you to a relax more and two your digestion is working better and more effectively to get the nutrition out of your food. So just even if you make it for five minutes, three minutes, however long it takes for you just to eat that apple and just enjoy it, it will help you feel better. So minor changes.

That's all we're taking a look at. Things that can barely have an impact in how much time you spend on what you consume. And since I did mention supplements before, I do have a philosophy in regards to I typically recommend whole foods or freeze-dried supplements just because they contain so much more than just individual chemicals that get isolated out.

So if you're going through your day and you need to boost something up a little bit more, protein powders, green powders, other whole food supplements like freeze-dried organs, fish roe, psyllium or chicory root powder and maybe some cultured dairy. If you can add these things into your diet, even if you're not making major shifts, grabbing a handful of pills of these supplements, it's easy to fit into your day but it also gives you all of these nutritional benefits. Put a little bit of protein powder in with your milk and your coffee.

Again, you're getting that great boost. A little bit of fiber powder, same thing. So just figure out what those right small things are for you to get that next natural better for you step.

(19:44 - 25:37)

So on that topic, what is the next better for you step? I don't know what it is that you're eating on a daily basis. So it's all kind of up to you personally. Is it replacing a diet soda or a cup of coffee with a glass of water? Is it using whole milk or cream instead of sugar-laden non-dairy creamer? Maybe it's just picking a lower sugar or less fried snack, half-calf, saying grace and just eating your food and just taking a moment to breathe and enjoy without multitasking.

Any of these are great places to start. So what is your next better for you step? And maybe it's not a food swap. Maybe it's an activity swap.

One of the things that I realized over the years is that I had a pattern of a 4.30 p.m. reward. I needed something to celebrate that I had gotten through all of the meetings that I had for the day and I was getting into quiet time. The nice thing about working in California is that everybody on the East Coast is done with their office hours and you get a quiet period of time.

So I developed this habit early in my career. It is everybody was done on the East Coast and logged off, I was finally able to get into doing my work and would take a moment to celebrate and reward myself with that afternoon candy bar or a cup of coffee. And really, I just needed a different type of reward.

So switching out that activity to a quick call or text exchange with a loved one, stepping outside for a moment, it can give you that moment of comfort, celebration, joy. Then that item consumed and maybe that's not, you can replace a food item with an activity. One of the things that worked out really well for me is when I checked in with home that late in the day, it reminded me I need to be going home, not spending two more hours getting everything wrapped up in the office and then going home.

So see what you can turn that 4.30 p.m. snack, if that's what your holdup is, to something that's more fulfilling and that helps you with your idea of work-life balance. And even just a mental shift and for me that at 4.30, that was instead of beginning my time to do my work, but that was my time to be wrapping up for the day, that made a big difference. So whatever works for you to help you boost your energy, improve your focus, and make sure that all of this is supporting your long-term goals of work-life harmony.

So what's that right next step for you? Moving into the next category, sleep. Sleep, honestly, I get it. It is probably one of the hardest things to do is to increase how much sleep you're getting.

At less than six hours a night, you've already kind of sacrificed back as far as you can because you're squeezing in as much as you can into your day. So it is probably the hardest, but honestly, it is one of the biggest impacts. If you can get yourself an extra hour of sleep on a regular basis, it will improve so many of your issues that you have in regards to energy and brain fog.

But if you can't, because I know it's hard to free up that time, let's talk about some of the things that can help you improve the quality of the sleep that you're getting. So let's take a look at evening routines. A couple of key things to keep in mind is you set up your routines to help you, and these still may be a little bit challenging, don't get me wrong, because it's going to take resorting your whole evening, but it's probably easier for you than trying to figure out how to get an extra hour of sleep.

So if you have no food or alcohol three hours before you go to bed, it helps your digestion to be done so that you can get, it can, your body can prioritize your brain and the rest that you need instead of being so focused on your belly. If you reduce the blue light exposure from your devices, it helps your body to start naturally winding down. All of this light that we get exposed to inside, it really throws off our circadian rhythms and particularly the super bright light from devices.

So the more that you can reduce that exposure or eliminate it at least an hour before bed, figuring out what are in that hour before you go to bed, how can you do more calming and soothing activities? Maybe it's some simple prep for your next day where you can reduce that lighting as you do them, journaling, prayer, Bible reading, snuggling with your partner. Any of these things help set you up in your routine to have better quality sleep. Another thing that you can do that helps you get better sleep is first thing in the morning.

Resetting your circadian rhythms so that you're connected with the light and darkness cycle that God designed us for and so that you can get the best sleep possible. You want to get a little bit of sunshine on your skin early in the morning in that first half hour of the day if possible because the sun is not like any of these artificial lights. You get so many more frequencies and different energy from that sun that helps you.

(25:37 - 26:40)

We already know that when you're in the sun, your body makes more vitamin D and I'm sure that because we are electromagnetic beings, when you look at subcellular level, that there's probably other benefits to it as well that we just don't understand and they're coming. So just getting some of that sunshine that God designed for us to get exposed to on a daily basis will help reset your circadian rhythms so you can get better quality sleep at night. Another thing that I find that a lot of my clients do, like I mentioned, alcohol to wind down.

Some people use a lot of sleep aids, Z-Quil, NyQuil, they're kind of on the regular consumption list to help wind down and get better sleep. Switching these out in your evening routine for calming herbal teas like chamomile, lavender, any of the sleep combinations that the tea companies sell. If you're into supplementation, again, magnesium, glycinate in particular, low-dose melatonin, these can help you sleep.

(26:40 - 28:38)

Do watch for melatonin because you can get a dependency on that and if you overtake too much melatonin, it'll be really hard in the morning to get going. It kind of feels a little bit like a hangover because your body's got to make so much more extra serotonin to overcome the melatonin in the system. That has to do with that sleep-wake cycle thing.

So just be careful in terms of what you're selecting and don't necessarily pick something at too high of a dose or become too dependent upon it. Any of these things can improve the sleep that you get. Getting good nighttime and morning routines resets those circadian rhythms.

So get it and then when you're ready, focus on getting more sleep. Get the games that you can with improving the quality of it and trust me, with better quality and a little bit more sleep, you will find yourself so much more productive, creative, strategic as you're working and you get through your day. But you do have to figure out where that extra time is going to come from and it's totally worth it.

Every single person that I've worked with and talked to that has figured out how to get that little bit more sleep in their life, there's physical, mental, relational work benefits that translates from those and carry into other areas of your life. So I've covered a lot really fast but I hope you get the idea. Super tiny little changes that you can make in your consumption patterns and the way that your routines are and your sleep.

So these are things that don't impact how busy you are, how crazy and hectic your life is. These itty bitty tiny little things you can swap out and to make small adjustments that you can easily fit in your schedule. This is the way to help you boost energy and improve concentration and focus.

(28:39 - 29:59)

So as you think about this, I guess we've already talked about, you probably know what that next right step is for you. So what's holding you back from implementing it? What is preventing you from a better for you swap? So let's simplify this even further. So don't worry about changing any of your routines.

Don't try and pick up anything else. You already know when you eat, when you don't eat. Just change access.

Often it's just one time you change what you're picking up at the having more water bottles instead of sodas, the snack drawer, the mini fridge, changing out your K-cups so that they're half-calf or decaf, having a large volume water bottle in your office next to the coffee pot. Just some of those small changes. You're not making anything different in your day-to-day.

You're just swapping things out so it works seamlessly with the way that you live your life right now. Does that make it more accessible? So that you can make that small, tiny next step?

(30:00 - )
I know I ran through these exercises pretty quickly so if you have any questions please email me sharon@whisperingfieldswellness.com. Next week I'll focus more on building physical resilience to stress as part of your stress management.

So it's all about building your grit. How do you increase your reserves and your tolerance and resilience? For in summary this is all about getting in back in tune and in rhythm with how God designed us and it gives us a lot of simple ways to restore energy and to improve that stress tolerance and they work perfectly with tiny habits. I hope this video has given you plenty of ideas for your stress management plan as you are do-it-yourselfing your stress recovery journey.

Click the link to download my worksheet on building tiny habits. You can effectively make change in your life with seconds a day. You can get started on this in five minutes or less.

It is that simple, I promise. If you've been working with this worksheet for a while and watching the videos, if you want to work with me so you can put these stress recovery tools together better and go deeper, click the services link below. As a Christian stress recovery coach, I'm here to help you explore more of what underlies your stress and imbalance, to ensure that you have the motivation and accountability to make the changes that you desire in your life.

I can come alongside to support and encourage you and share a few strategies and tools to help you with mindset, lifestyle, and diet changes. See you next episode. Have a blessed day.

(0:01 - 1:36)

Have you noticed that some days you're more sensitive to stressors than others? Something that wouldn't bother you one day, suddenly it stresses you out. Your sensitivity changes based on the reserves that you have and how resilient you are. I call this grit.

There's subtle changes that can signal that you may need to guard yourself more or to build up your reserves. Also, stressors are cumulative compared to your stress tolerance capacity. If you have a lot of small stressful things, minor irritations impacting you, it reduces your capability to handle more.

You're more vulnerable to being pushed over the edge. I'm sure you've had plenty of situations where you're handling everything thrown at you and carrying all of your burdens. There's just a lot going on and you're doing perfectly fine with it.

Then something happens or a situation pops up that you normally can deal with and it just sets you off. It's the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, that one more tiny burden that is just too much to bear. Your stress response ticks up that next level with that straw, that extra burden that fell on you, and you either come out fighting with unusual sharpness in your tone, impatience, or more easily angered, or you take off in flight to isolate physically or mentally or procrastinate, or freeze where you just give up, or you fawn by taking whatever that person brings just to make the situation end.

(1:37 - 2:27)

It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 10, 12-3. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. No testing has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

And God is faithful. He will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. But when you are tested, he will also provide a way out so you can endure it.

So today, let's go over some of the early warning signs that indicate that we are being tested to the limits of our endurance so they can be built into your stress management plan so that you have a way out and an ability to endure it before you come to your knees or start crawling on your belly and continue to carry your burdens. So let's start with prayer. Lord, thank you for bringing my dear friends to listen today.

(2:28 - 3:08)

Many of us are carrying heavy burdens of stress. We challenge and test ourselves to the limit and carry a lot of responsibility. Personal history has shown that we can take on a lot and withstand a lot more.

Yet as we believe that we are standing firm, we need to be careful that we do not fall. Relationship and health crises occur when we consistently go past our limits and keep trudging forward with our load, even if we have fallen to our knees or crawling on our bellies. And I'm sure some of you recognize those moments.

We keep pushing onwards on self-will alone without turning to you, God, for support and strength. We have limits and you don't. Help us recognize them.

(3:08 - 17:15)

In our willfulness, we need your help to avoid taking on too much. Help us see the way out so we can avoid being tested beyond what we can bear. Help us learn to lean on you for strength rather than try and do it all alone.

I pray all is well with every listener, healthy in body, renewed in mind, and strong in spirit. As they reduce stress and improve work-life balance, may they know your will and your love. In Jesus' name, Amen.

In case if we haven't met before, I'm Cher McCall with Whispering Fields Wellness. I'm a stress recovery coach, which means that I help people like you that are struggling with chronic stress, mainly from work, and help them to reduce their stress and to find greater work-life balance so that they're able to thrive and flourish as God intends. In today's episode of Grace Over Grind, we're going to end up covering three different topics and go through an exercise.

The first topic is common low-reserve situations so that you start recognizing when you don't necessarily have the energy and things can become more stressful than normal. Then we're going to get into early warning signs that's an indication of when you're taking on too much work or stress. Then we'll go into signs of breakdown, which means that you've gone past those early warning signs, you've continued to overwork, you've continued to stress, and it's starting to have the next level symptoms in your life.

This is before you get to a full-blown health crisis or relationship crisis. Then we're going to pull this all together and get into an exercise on preventing the crisis because when you recognize these signs you can make the necessary changes in your life so that you don't have that health crisis or relationship crisis. Hopefully you haven't experienced those yet, but if you are you understand what a learning experience those are and how it really motivates you to want to make significant changes in your life.

But for those of you that haven't, we really want you to avoid that learning experience. So our first topic today is to recognize common low reserve situations. Really it just means that you've got depleted energy and you really can't take on as much as you normally would.

So the most common situations are recognized by the acronym HALT, H-A-L-T, and that's hunger, anger, anxiousness, loneliness, and tired. So if you're feeling any of these four it means that if you have a stressful situation or encounter a stress trigger you're more likely to have a higher level stress response than you normally would. So things that wouldn't normally bother you can end up being a significant stress trigger.

So how well do you recognize these now? I take a look at myself when I was in some of my peak workaholic episodes. Because my schedule was quadruple booked at some points in time, always double and sometimes triple booked, I would defer breaks. It would be just absolutely non-stop.

There'd be times when I would end up needing to go take a bio break and I would hold it hold it hold it hold it hold it to the point that I didn't need to anymore. But by the time I actually went and did the bio break I could physically tell how unhealthy that had been because my body was starting to get dehydrated and to recycle things. If you've ever been to that point you can kind of tell because it's very different than a normal time when you go take a bio break to the bathroom.

So you may not be recognizing these very easily right now because once I trained my body to ignore these signs of hunger or needing to go take a bio break and go to the restroom it became much easier and easier to ignore them and then I wasn't getting these clues of when I needed to pause and take a break and take care of things. So as you take a look at your stress journal if you've been doing that exercise how well would you say that you've been pausing and taking care of yourself in these situations? Are you seeing in a lot of your notes and descriptions that you're hungry all the time or you're on edge and irritable? What are these patterns that you're seeing in there? So the classic one that a lot of people recognize is hangry. So since that Snickers Bar commercial a lot of people recognize it.

So when you're hungry and angry at the same time because you're in such a low blood sugar and just anything will set you off. You'll explode even if somebody just comes to talk to you and interrupts a focused activity. So think about how this is showing up in your life.

So have you been taking care of yourself or are you just kind of plowing through and just dealing with whatever the repercussions of that is? So as you think about these situations these are fully avoidable. If you get enough sleep, if you interact with enough people, if you're monitoring your mental and emotional cues, if you're feeding yourself, taking the right breaks, taking care of your body, you can pretty much avoid getting into those four states for a good part of the time. So what tiny habits can you set up to minimize the likelihood of halt being one of your co-triggers? We'll talk about it a little bit more in the next episode.

So do jot down a couple of things to make a list of. We're going to talk more about how do we maintain higher levels of reserves? How do we build our grit so that we can more positively respond to the stressors that occur in our life? Since work is a very stressful environment and we're not going to be able to avoid all of the challenges that come towards us. Moving along into early warning signs.

These are those signals that you get that you're working too much, you've got too much stress. Whatever the signal is that you're getting in your being that you're just doing too much. These could be physical, mental, spiritual, holy spirit yelling at you.

These can be unrelated to your stress reaction. They're the subtle signs that you need to take further action. They're often hard to detect and often overlooked.

These are those times when you're feeling not quite right, that you recognize, okay, I'm always stressed, but this is just that little bit more, or I work a lot, but this is just that extra bit where you feel that you're on that edge. You may even realize that this is how you felt just before you had an even harder time in the past. This was the lead up to some dramatic situation that ended up occurring because you were so depleted or so tapped out.

As you look at your life and what you've been learning through stress journaling, how can you tell when you're starting to dance close to the edge? I think about this is the different categories of consumption patterns, behaviors, thoughts, feelings, sensations, the same kind of things that we've talked about before. What changes do you see that tells you that you're kind of starting to hit that limit? So is it that you're starting to consume more alcohol, sleep aids? Are you grabbing more comfort food than normal? Maybe going to excessive levels compared to where you normally use them? Or in behavior, again, some of these things in my past that I've used to help me identify between sane and insane levels of work was emails at four in the morning or 11 p.m. at night, getting less than four hours of sleep, more than one time per week, chronic lateness because I could never get everything done to stay on time to the plan that I'd committed for. So you'll see these things in your behaviors as well.

Identifying when are you really pushing that edge of too much? When it comes to thoughts, these could be things where you notice, okay, my normal negativity bias, it's now becoming where I'm beating myself up. I'm going for the adrenalization where I beat myself up so much that I get like an adrenaline spike so I can keep going. It can show up as forgetfulness or such a heavy case of brain fog.

You just can't think clearly. For feelings, it could be uncaring, moodiness, irritability that's out of character for you. Maybe those are two earliest signs.

Maybe it's closer to arguments, outbursts. I don't know what your life is so it kind of depends on where you are on that spectrum and what those signs are for you that have meaning. In the category of sensations, these early warning signs could be the inability to experience pleasure, physical discomfort, pain.

So kind of go through these different categories and list out what signs you get that you're taking on too much work or feeling too much stress. As you list these out, it helps you to build greater self-awareness of them. And like I said, some of these you may not have a high sense of awareness of at this point in time.

So if you need to, compare them against what is it like when I'm not stressed or overworked? Do you remember that? Do you remember a time when you were on vacation and finally all of the physical discomfort and all of the stress and the thoughts of work melted away and you were just having a grand time with your loved ones? Remember that moment? You want to compare that moment to, okay, what is too much? When you start having that difficult time and you start feeling out of balance, that's what these early warning signs are about. Another way to think about it to get to these early warning signs is to use a framework like we used back on the Christian Identity Statement, where you're comparing who am I, what am I like on a Christ-like day, good day, okay day, bad day, worst day, that type of categorization and giving you the full spectrum. You can go through on each of those and identify where that ties in.

So for example, as we take a look at the feelings I was just talking about, maybe an okay day, moodiness and irritability are okay, they happen, but on a bad day you're getting into outbursts unexpectedly, you're getting into arguments, then on a worst day you're just pissed off to no end and there's not a chance that you're going to smile. So think about those gradations in each of those categories for different common behaviors that you have and that can help you identify those early warning signs. We'll come back to these in the exercise today to put those in, figure out then how do we use that to help us reduce stress and to improve work-life balance and so that you can regain harmony as you're moving into the space before it continues to progress, where you stumble and fall and lead to your health getting worse, your relationships getting more difficult because of all of the stress and work that you're taking on.

Getting into the last concept that I'm going to talk about today, this is called signs of breakdown. Now these are go one step beyond that early warning sign. So if we look about that spectrum of a Christ-like day, a good day, an okay day, a bad day, a worse day, these means that you're having more worse days than bad days.

So it's not that your life has gone into full meltdown and crisis, you're not having a health crisis or been diagnosed with some stress-related disease because of how chronically stressed you've been or that your relationship is ending and someone's walking out on you because you work too much, you don't give enough time for them. This is those signs that you're starting to get really close to it. If you haven't been there, you may not really recognize it.

If you've been there or gotten really close, you probably have an understanding of what I mean. There is a continuum from I am having a fabulous day and not very stressed out to somewhat stressed out, to a little bit more stressed out, to a little bit more stressed out, to like I'm starting not to being able to handle it. I'm having even more difficulty being able to handle it all and keep it all together versus crash, okay.

So this is where we're talking about where you're over in this spectrum here of having difficulty, a lot of difficulties dealing with it, more worse days than bad days. So this means that you've been working on it and despite your best efforts, you've gotten to the point where just feeling worse and worse or the workload has gotten sky high. There's still time to take action before the crisis occurs.

So so many times people often feel that when they're having the most difficult time that there is very little you can do to help yourself. You think, oh my goodness, I've gone too far. I'm off the edge of this cliff. I can't do anything. But you're not off the edge of the cliff. You're not there yet.

(17:15 - 23:20)

You can still grab hold of that ledge and be able to pull yourself forward and up from it. So when you have prior planning, when you're in a pretty good space, you have that plan. You know exactly what you're going to do.

It's not like you're just grasping at that that tree that's hanging on the edge and expecting to pull it up for dear life. You've put down that ladder of what you're going to be able to have multiple spots to grab on to as you're coming up to that edge and starting to fall over so that you can climb yourself back up and to get to feeling better and have less stress and to get back to a manageable workload so that you have work-life balance. But it takes some forethought because if you do get to that point, you're not gonna have the mental capabilities, the energy, the time to strategically figure your way out of it.

So it's best to do it now before you get to that spot. But even when you are super stressed out and you have a ton of work, there are things that you can do and that's what we want to make sure that through today's exercise you're starting to think about. So getting back to that same kind of question.

So how do you know when you're on that edge? When you're like your foot's starting to come off the edge, you're starting to fall and you need something to grab on to so you don't fall over that proverbial edge and go into a full-blown crisis. So what are those signs in your life? You want to do the same type of thing with your consumption patterns, your behaviors, your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations. Identify what those are.

Use the same approach that you did last time. And again, just take it on that ongoing continuum if you think about it. So using again as an example, let's go with a physical sensation this time.

So if you've got physical discomfort for you, is an early warning sign. Maybe now that next level is that you've got a headache requiring aspirin. If you're anything like I was at the peak of some of my stress and workaholic tendencies, early warning signs is I can get through a couple of days with a headache and popping aspirin and self-medicate.

But it became the much more significant when I was more than 48 hours and it was still going on. And it was getting worse and it wasn't getting better. If it was 48 hours it was getting better, I'd be like, okay, yay, I'm on the other side of it and I am getting myself improved.

But there are that before the breakdown sign you want to be kind of firm on it. So depending on where you are in your life and what's going on, you may have different definitions of between early warning sign and signs of breakdown of what that really means for you and how you can detect it. Moving along, we're going to do the exercise today.

It's all about preventing the crisis. These are your risk management plans, your mitigations to ensure that it's very clear of what you want to do. So think about it like if you don't deal with risk management at work, think of it as like your family emergency plan.

It's in the event of a fire, how are you guys getting out of the house? Where are you all meeting? How are you communicating? If there's a, we lived in a tsunami zone for a while when we were in Southern California. We'd had to have our plan of where are we going to meet if the tsunami comes through and we are coming from different directions. Or when we lived in South Florida, okay, hurricane preparedness, we're going to have all of this ready.

So in case if we lose power on the other side of the hurricane, what we're going to do. So that's what I mean by building these plans so that you have already identified in your stress management plan, what are you going to do when you have these early warning signs occurring in your life and these signs that a breakdown is imminent. You want to prevent the crisis.

You want to do what you can to make it so that things don't get worse. So you're not taking on even more work so that you're not taking on more stress and you're not damaging the relationships that you have around you or continuing to break down your health through this process. So as I mentioned before, you really want to establish these when you're in a good space and you're able to make clear decisions.

So as you go through and you get more and more stressed out because of how stress impacts your cognitive and your emotional responses, it's really hard to kind of figure your way out of it when you're there. So at least if you know that this is something that you're struggling with, let's get some good plans in place on paper so that you can use them. So we're going to start with the early warning signs.

So these are early warning signs. You want to identify when you have so many and you can pick maybe when I have three of these things happening in my life, when I have five of these things happening in my life, whatever your deal is or if they show up at all. I don't know where you are in your stress recovery so pick what makes sense to you.

Then I must do this or avoid this. This is the musts. You want to go through and populate based upon your wellness toolbox ideas, your tiny habits ideologue, your regular routine.

Sometimes you know you've been sacrificing some of those things in your regular routine so you can do that a little bit more. So maybe there's things that you don't sacrifice when you're seeing your early warning signs. So what are those must do's or avoids? So take a moment if you need to pause the video so you can jot those down.

(23:23 - 24:20)

Then we're going to move into your could do's. So what are some things you want to think about doing? So maybe there's particularly a lot of the things we talked about in the wellness toolbox episodes. It's go out with friends, something you don't normally do as part of your regular routine but you know really helps you relax.

It helps you disconnect so that you can de-stress and recharge and unwind. So you want to have a handful of those things just so that they're readily available for you. So that's the early warning sign action plan.

Pretty simple right? Then we get into the signs of breakdown. This is really all must do's or avoids. You're going to give yourself fewer choices because when it's early warning signs, you've got plenty of runway still of how much more stress you can handle, how much more work you can take before like things start really falling apart.

(24:21 - 25:17)

So but now that you're at this next step, you're having more worse days than bad days, you give yourself fewer choices. This is got to be really clear about what you must do or avoid. It's got to be very directive with very clear instructions so that you prevent yourself from falling off of that cliff without some kind of safety net, without some way of getting back up on the other edge.

That's what this phase of action planning is all about. So again if you need to take a moment and pause the video to jot down your ideas. As you go through these exercises there is no right or wrong.

You are unique. Only you and God knows what's going on in your life and your body in terms of what feels right, how much can you take, how much can you endure before you need to take God's way out that he's offering you. And it's going to change as you're on this journey.

(25:17 - 29:58)

Some of the things that you're feeling and experience right now you can handle at really high levels. But once you get to a point where you're better managing your stress and it's a lot less, you can change some of these things and catch it even sooner. So you're not seeing such big swings in your stress levels.

This is all based upon your personal stress resilience and tolerance. And you recognize because some days you don't have the same tolerance that you do on other days because you're hungry, you're angry, you're anxious, you're lonely, you're tired. There may be some adjustments even in those and from that view.

And as you put these you want to really focus on hope. You don't want to focus on self-blame, shame, guilt, any of these things that you do to berate yourself. It will just make the stress worse.

You want to focus on hope and feeling better. And sometimes as you're putting these plans together it's sometimes useful just to ask your loved ones, hey when am I getting to be a little bit of a bear? When do you think it's getting to be that I'm working too much or I'm stressing too much? What are some of those things? Because if you trained yourself to kind of ignore all of these signs from your physical, mental, spiritual being and from Holy Spirit you might need to talk to somebody so you get some increased self-awareness and begin to work on those. And just the fact that you're asking them I'm sure it will help promote some relationship peace because you are asking them for their assistance so that you can get better, so that you can do your part to regain that peace and calm so you can thrive and flourish.

So now that you've got your plans together how can you become more sensitive to those signs that you wrote down? How can you use them to help you to stay more balanced? So give some thought to that one. If you're enjoying journaling or have been able to add prayer to your routine it may be as simple as a couple of behavioral checks is part of your daily self-evaluation or prayer that you're just checking in with yourself to make sure you're not falling into it. Maybe it's a weekly thing not a daily thing.

So whatever's right for you but you need to start increasing your awareness that these signs and these signals that are coming on and you want to keep these action plans of what happens when these signs show up in my life of what you're going to do. You want to keep them in your stress journal somewhere easily accessible so you can come back to them. You don't want random pieces of paper that go get lost because when you're totally stressed out you're not going to remember where you put them.

I guarantee it. So put them somewhere where you're going to use them where they're regularly can be found. If you're not journaling maybe they go in your bible just so that you have ready and easy access without any thinking of where these plans are.

And one of the other things after you've used them for a little bit so today may be too early, ask yourself when are you well enough? When do you get back to okay days and good days so that you don't need to take these extra measures that you just identified? It's an indication of when you can revert back to your regular routines or when you need to make some changes and revert back to those. So as you work with these action plans and these and start recognizing these signs more you can use these in different ways as you manage your stress as you're at different points in the curve of how stressed out you are. I know I ran through these exercises pretty quickly so if you have any questions please email me sharon@whisperingfieldswellness.com. Next week I'll focus more on building physical resilience to stress as part of your stress management.

So it's all about building your grit. How do you increase your reserves and your tolerance and resilience? For in summary this is all about getting in back in tune and in rhythm with how God designed us and it gives us a lot of simple ways to restore energy and to improve that stress tolerance and they work perfectly with tiny habits. I hope this video has given you plenty of ideas for your stress management plan as you are do-it-yourselfing your stress recovery journey.

Click the link to download my worksheet on building tiny habits. You can effectively make change in your life with seconds a day. You can get started on this in five minutes or less.

It is that simple, I promise. If you've been working with this worksheet for a while and watching the videos, if you want to work with me so you can put these stress recovery tools together better and go deeper, click the services link below. As a Christian stress recovery coach, I'm here to help you explore more of what underlies your stress and imbalance, to ensure that you have the motivation and accountability to make the changes that you desire in your life.

I can come alongside to support and encourage you and share a few strategies and tools to help you with mindset, lifestyle, and diet changes. See you next episode. Have a blessed day.

(0:00 - 2:50)

Lately, you've been called or nudged by the Holy Spirit to do something about your work-related stress and extremely long work weeks. It's come upon you almost out of the blue because of how busy you've been. After years of not having any issues, relationship tension, exhaustion, lack of energy, health concerns are pressing on you to do something different.

You realize that you can't continue on the same path with work encompassing all of your time and energy. So at this point, you've realized that instead of stress and overwork having a vague and fuzzy outcome and impact on your life at some point in the future, it's in your face and impacting your life now. So how do you move yourself to that first small action that will have impact on reducing your stress, improving your work-life harmony, and beginning to repair those relationships and restoring your health? This is where I strongly believe that faith-driven tiny habits can help.

People are more likely to act from habit when they're depleted, distracted, or under time pressure. Doesn't that sound like what you're facing on a daily basis is a super busy high achiever in a high-pressure role? Creating habits needs to be focused on ease and convenience, making it easy for new behaviors to become routine and mindless. And don't underestimate their power.

These are like small investments with that long ROI. The small little things that you do and making steady improvements day after day can lead to transformation and give you the life that you want. Let's open in prayer.

Lord, thank you for bringing my dear friends to listen today. May they identify how to take that nudge from Holy Spirit to improve their well-being and move it to action. So much of what occurs in modern lifestyle makes it hard to hear those calls or nudges from God.

Depending on how great the distraction of daily life, it may take some significant circumstances to start recognizing the need to live differently and start taking action. Please help them find the motivation, guidance, strategies, and tactics to reduce stress and improve work-life harmony. You know what is weighing on their heart and in their lives.

Give them the courage and strength to begin to grow and transform their lifestyle and diet, to reclaim time, restore energy, reduce stress, and find more harmony and balance. I pray all is well with every listener, healthy in body, renewed in mind, and strong in spirit. As they reduce stress and improve work-life balance, may they know thy will and your love. In Jesus's name, amen.

(2:50 - 6:32)

Hello, I'm Sharon McCall with Whispering Fields Wellness. Today in Grace Over Grind, I'm going to end up doing a recap of faith-driven habit model, the impact of environment on building effective habits.

Habits just are so much easier to adopt when they're easier and convenient. For example, so many people work from habits. Did you realize that people make over 200 food-based decisions per day, yet recall only 15? Because so many of them are based on habit, not on willful decision.

Test yourself. What food-related choices do you remember making an actual decision on in the last 24 hours? And decision fatigue and the limits of self-will are very real. So when you're trying to make changes in your life, you don't want to end up making them hard or really make it so that you're constantly having to focus on doing the right thing.

You want to make them easy, convenient, obvious for you to being able to move forward. So as an example of this, when you're on a diet, how many times can you walk past that box of donuts before you grab one? And that's why I don't recommend making huge changes when you're faced with significant things happening in your life, when you're living a life of chronic stress and constant overwork. Small, tiny changes will allow you to win the marathon.

You will end up getting exhausted if you sprint and try and do this all at once. You want to make sure that you have effective habit building by making desired choices easier and more convenient and obvious until they can become routine. Faith-driven tiny habits are perfect when you want to make changes, but lack the time or energy for big changes.

They're small and incremental over time and build momentum. As you take a look at your investment strategy, if you put away a dollar a day into a steady investment, it has dividends over time. And that's just like tiny habits.

By doing the small right thing and continuing to focus on adding to that and expanding that, you will have the transformation that you desire. Also, if you choose to do faith-driven tiny habits as opposed to more secular ones, as you lean into your faith, God meets you part way. And this can be done for all types of changes, because when you're focusing on God and your Christian identity is why you want to change and the desired outcome is to be closer to God as part of your plan, He will meet you part way.

And this approach can work whether you're working on spiritual growth, social, improving your relationships, emotional, intellectual, physical, environmental wellness. In a few weeks we'll go over financial and occupational. All the things we've talked about in the wellness toolbox topic so far are applicable for tiny habits.

So just to kind of run over the model really quick, I know it's been a while since I talked about the model in its entirety. So that first step is recognizing God's plan for you. It's all about building habits based upon how you want to grow your Christian identity and the vision God has given you of what thriving and flourishing means to you.

(6:33 - 13:30)

And this is an identity-focused change approach, which even scientists agree is more effective than outcome-based ones. You don't just want a long list of all the things that you want. You want to focus on who you will be, and as a result of being, these are the things that you do, because that's what people like that do.

So when you say that you're a non-smoker, it never crosses your mind to even have that cigarette, versus I'm trying to quit. It means you're open to that possibility. So that's the distinction between identity and outcome-focused changes.

So then the next phase is examining and testing your ways. It's all about comparing your current thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to the ones that you aspire to be based upon your identity statement and your vision of work-life harmony. What's supporting you? What's not? What's at odds? Going through and identifying where changes need to happen in your life.

So in this part is where we structure and build and design tiny habits, and this is based on the ABC model. So it's an anchor, a behavior, the smallest possible behavior you can come up with, and the celebrate. And the celebrate is really important because you got to do it before the action to remind you, during to reinforce, and afterwards to reward yourself.

This ensures that this new behavior becomes something so desirable, it is easier, and the preferred option for you to do is you as the behavioral choice. And this is where you can spend a lot of time designing your habits, changing your environment, so that you can create that ease, that convenience, so it's obvious, so it's the most desirable option for you. And you can design this all up front, or you can build it in in the couple of steps as you're working on continuous improvement.

So the next phase is to act in his will to do what is required, and this is in the implementation of the change. Once you've designed your change, it's about putting it into action into your life, then monitoring it and adapting, seeing what sticks, what's working. Do you need to reinforce any of the steps or any of the elements in the design, so that the next time that you can more successfully achieve that? And then once you've sustained for a week the new behavior, and see that it's starting to become a regular part of your routine, then you can go into the next phase, which is persevere and grow, which is to train and iterate, continuing to grow that behavior with the next smallest action, and just repeating through the cycle.

In time, you're transformed by God's power, and to walk by the Spirit. Take a look at John 15.4.5 if you need a little bit of inspiration. You will have less stress and more time at home for yourself and your loved ones as you continue this process, and apply it in more areas of your life.

If you haven't downloaded the guide before, it's super easy to get started. It only takes minutes. It's set up as Mad Libs style, as a Mad Libs style worksheet, so you just fill in the blank as you go along.

It will not take you more than five minutes to get started if this is something you want to give a try to. I'm not doing a formal exercise today. We're just going to go over several ideas on how you can design and build more effective habits.

You can design these into your habits, or use these as small adjustments to help making habits easier and more convenient for you as you're in those last two steps. So remember the four of them. It's the R-E-A-P, so when you act in His will and persevere, those last two steps that I'm talking about.

These steps and this approach is all about overcoming any inertia or obstacles that are holding you back from being successful as you continue to train and iterate, and as you implement these behaviors in your life and turn them into habits and routines. So the first of the items that we're going to cover today is environmental cues. To effectively make changes, you really need to simplify, and you can do this in changing your environment.

Thinking about how do you make things the easiest to access. So let's, I started talking about food earlier, so I'll just continue on food. So as you think about when it's the middle of the day, and you're really hungry, and the first thing you, there's nothing in your office to grab.

So you go to the vending machine, and you pick something from the vending machine, because it's the closest and simplest food that you'll be able to get. So the easiest to access at this point in time is the vending machine. If you want to change your habits so that you're eating something that's better for you, or at least a little bit healthier, or something more convenient even, start a snack drawer or a mini fridge.

So you want to make it so that it's easy to access, and that it's super convenient for you when you're depleted, distracted, under time pressure. So because particularly when food is being just consumed as fuel to prevent you from just toppling over in exhaustion, it's not truly being enjoyed. So you want to make sure that you're making it easy and convenient.

And then while you're doing that, you just want to make sure that you set up the right choices for you. So let's say you're doing the snack drawer. What's the assortment, the quantity, the pack size that you want? Because if you get a really big package of M&Ms, I guarantee you as soon as you open those and you put those on your desk, they're going to be gone before you even realize it, because you're just going to be like eating through the course of the day.

But if you want to being able to enjoy a treat of M&Ms or trail mix or whatever, getting down to that individual portion size ensures that even if you're automatically eating, you're eating that right quantity and not getting into that stress eating and that mindless eating that you might be wanting to avoid. So the other thing too from an environmental cue standpoint is reinforcement. So is there a way that you can do what's called temptation bundling, where you're pairing an action that you want with an action that you need? So if you want to start exercising, so getting up and getting yourself that first cup of coffee, maybe you need to figure out how to put some exercising in between.

Maybe you put your exercise clothes out instead of your work clothes, put your sneakers there. So at least you're starting the process of doing some jogging up the hallway a little bit before you have that first cup of coffee. Whatever it is, you want to figure out what that right bundling is and then create that in your environment.

(13:31 - 17:17)

Another way is a vice-virtue combination. So if you know, and you're going back to the snack drawer, if you know you're going to end up putting that individual package of M&Ms, well balance it. Put in some apples and other things that are better for you choices to make it so that you've got some options for you and it's just that right combination.

And you really do want to eliminate the self-control factor because you are so stressed and exhausted. You want whatever is easy and convenient. So set yourself up.

Personally, I'm a dried fruit and nut person, yet there are so many times when I'd have like that chocolate craving and I'd go and send the admin off to go and find me some chocolate of whatever type because I didn't like what was in the vending machine. So to get away from that, because that was actually leading into like smoothies and all sorts of like high calorie shakes and things. So I just kept some Ghirardelli squares in my stash or some mini candy bars just so I could get that right combination, that right self-control.

So I wasn't eating the big old mondo thing that she picked up from the service station around the corner. And you can do this with any kind of change. So let's say you want to drink more water.

So how do you put the water pitcher closer than the coffee pot or the soda machine? If you want to being able to do more Bible reading, what's the most convenient location for you to put your Bible? There's one story where somebody, she put it literally on the toilet for first thing in the morning. She'd gotten a special Bible that she just kept there, but it didn't ensure that when she went to use it first thing in the morning, she read. Different strokes, different folks.

So if that's your thing, go ahead. I'm more of a Bible on the pillow or right where I put my phone to charge it so that as I put the phone down, I grab the Bible. You can use your charger as a boundary.

So if you move your charger to a different area, so it makes it so that it's not as easy to access. It's less convenient. Maybe you're going to be less likely to go and access it once you put it on there.

So if you get in the habit of putting your phone on the charger in another room, and then you have your evening in the family room or living room, you're less likely to go and go check that phone because it's not convenient and it's not easy. Anything you can do that can add resistance or remove it depending on whether it's a desirable habit that you want to encourage or something you want to discourage. Other examples of environmental cues are particularly around being able to remember to do the action or your rewards.

Place those in the right locations. Post-it notes to remind you on the mirror if you're trying to do something for self-care in the restroom. Post-it note on the fridge if you want to make sure that you're getting your supplements or starting to take your lunch to work and to make sure you're taking it out of the fridge.

Can't tell you the number of times I forgot to take my lunch out of the fridge after I went through the effort of making it the night before and then get to work and realize I have nothing. So you never know until you're in the middle of all of this what environmental cues will be the most helpful for you to ensure that you are progressing with your habits in the way that you want. Moving into the next topic in regards to the environment.

The environment can be an anchor. So many of our routines we think about as being time-based, just like your first thing in the morning, last thing at night, just before you leave work. You could end up setting something up as a little habit routine. Anytime you enter or leave a space. So there was someone that I'd read about. He called himself proactively lazy.

(17:18 - 19:09)

He set up his environment and he kept it organized. Every time that he exited the space, he would clean it up and then make sure it was perfect for when he came back in. For a lot of us that are time pressured, I just, the organization thing is really tough.

It really is. But the, because you're always going from one task immediately into the next one. There's usually not time to kind of organize yourself before you leave that space.

So I totally get it if you're like me in that. And it took though, it helped anytime I re-entered my space, catch my breath, calm my thoughts, focus on my top priority as I'm organizing my desk to be focused on what's next. Because there are plenty of times it was like in complete disarray as I finished up one thing I grabbed for a meeting that I realized it was suddenly time for me to shoot off to the conference room for.

And then I didn't need any of the stuff that was here for, that I'd been prepping with and I could clear it and get on to the next item. And it was a great way for me to just shift gears every time I re-entered into my office to make sure that I reset it for the next phase of activity. So another idea in regards to how to use environment as an anchor is behavioral geofencing.

So you make identified behaviors acceptable based upon a location. A lot of people use this as they're starting to work on alternatives to diet, like controlling where do they eat ice cream or special treats or what times of the day so that they stop eating in the bedroom or eating while they're watching TV and just kind of narrow it down to whatever it is that they want to do. So behavioral geofencing is fairly common for those types of changes.

(19:10 - 22:32)

But it also works when you're trying to reduce your workload. So let's start with the example of you want to work fewer hours in the evening. So maybe what your plan is is in week one you just say you're not taking the phone to dinner.

So whenever you walk into the dining room you can't have your phone. So it's kind of like the example that we did a couple weeks ago where the guy left his cell phone on the couch and dropped it as he was going to dinner so he could enjoy more family time with dinner. Then once that became habit, week two could end up being no devices in the dining room or in the living room for dinner, meaning you now need to go put it on a charger someplace so it's not just dropping it on the couch.

Then you could progress to, okay, no devices in the dining room or living room from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Kind of see how we're slowly building this up including time and location. So the next week could end up being no devices in the dining room, the living rooms from 6 p.m. to bedtime. Then you could go all the way up to a dining room, living room, bedroom from 6 p.m. to bedtime.

So just kind of depending on what you want to accomplish, you design that habit and that progression as you persevere and grow as you iterate this process with each week in terms of how you're changing what that core behavior is. You just keep tweaking it as you go and there's so many different ways that you could take this approach. Maybe you just start with your laptop or maybe and then you go to the cell phone on the laptop.

So it's all about what makes sense to you. What would be effective for you as a deterrent to work in the evenings, to set those boundaries that you can maintain and have success with instead of just saying, oh, I ain't gonna work in the evening anymore and then slowly find all the reasons why you still need to. Start with something reasonable and then work your way up to what it is that you truly desire.

And by making it so small and so painless, you will be successful. And because you have that momentum of successful change, it'll be able to continue to allow you to iterate that 1% better every day. And whenever you get stuck, God's there.

He's there. Your chief spiritual officer is there to guide you and to get you that next step, that next direction. So another way to use the environment to being able to ensure things are easy and convenient or not if you're trying to avoid something is blockers and lockers.

Technology is great these days. So maybe some of your productivity losses that lead you to take work home is distraction. It's so easy to get distracted in the work environment.

You have stuff coming at you all the time. And so one of the things that you might want to do is being able to use app blockers, do not disturb mode, turn off your notifications, silence, so you can get more focus work done and get less distracted by all the stuff that's coming in. Maybe you want to end up putting your phone in a timed lockbox even so literally you can't get to it.

So it's just based upon the time where it's being able to make it so that you can open it and get to it. Whatever it is, because sometimes that silent mode, I know, it still doesn't stop that habit of let me look, let me look. When it's in a time lockbox, you literally can't look until the timer is up.

(22:34 - 22:59)

There's one example I ended up hearing about. I have not heard anybody yet that's brave enough to try this, but I keep throwing it out there just in case if it inspires other people. He ended up having his admin reset his social media passwords every Monday and make sure he didn't know them, and then he would get the passwords on Friday as he left work.

(23:00 - 25:27)

This meant that Monday through Friday, zero social media. Couldn't look at any of the stuff that would distract him, and then he could do whatever he wanted on the weekend with the social media and then come back into work and can't access it again because of this procedure that he set up. You can also set this up though if you with the same approach to have it so that it changes your work password so you can't work the weekend.

Thought? I'm sure that you've got somebody in your family that would love to being able to help you with that. Even if you don't have an admin, I'm sure you can get somebody to help hold the keys to your passwords and block you out so you can't do what you don't want to do. Those are just a series of different ideas on how you can use the environment and different tools to being able to make habits easier, more convenient, so that they're preferable to whatever it is that you don't want to do.

And if you want to increase the resistance to something that you don't want to do, you can use the same approaches. It's just the opposite. Make it harder.

You want to increase the difficulty to do the things that you no longer want to do. So it's all about that balance because intrinsically, humans want to do whatever is easiest for them. And the more exhausted we are, the more distracted we are, the more we're going to go for the easiest and most convenient choice.

If you have any questions, do reach out to Sharon@whisperingfieldswellness.com. I welcome any discussion on these. I'm also available in the Facebook group as well if you'd like to end up bringing the discussion there. In closing, I hope this gives you plenty of ideas on improving your habit building and creating the changes you want in your life.

I know you want less stress and more work-life balance. So hopefully this gives you some great ideas to proceed. Today I reviewed the summary of the benefits, or the challenges, of habits to reduce decisions and make things more automatic.

A quick review of faith-driven tiny habits and how you can change the environment to make your new habit more effective. Stop feeling like you're making no progress on reducing stress and improving work-life balance on your own. God wants you to thrive and flourish as you fulfill his plan for you.

(25:27 - 27:04)

As you take these teeny tiny steps to grow closer to him and start displacing work as an idol in your life, he will help you. When you are weak and have difficulty doing what is right, he can help you get through the situation if you let him. Whether you are using this approach to make changes in physical and mental health to restore energy and improve resilience, to create calming routines that reduce stress, or to reclaim time or change your work habits so you can have work-life harmony, this is a simple, practical, and easy approach that works when you feel like there is no time for anything else in your day.

Click the link to download my worksheet on building tiny habits. You can effectively make change in your life with seconds a day. You can get started on this in five minutes or less.

It is that simple, I promise. If you've been working with this worksheet for a while and watching the videos, if you want to work with me so you can put these stress recovery tools together better and go deeper, click the services link below. As a Christian stress recovery coach, I'm here to help you explore more of what underlies your stress and imbalance, to ensure that you have the motivation and accountability to make the changes that you desire in your life.

I can come alongside to support and encourage you and share a few strategies and tools to help you with mindset, lifestyle, and diet changes. See you next episode. Have a blessed day.

How are stress and work wearing you down? What can you do to restore your energy reserves and feel better? That's our focus for today. With being caught in an almost unending survival mode, stress takes a significant toll on your body. Insomnia, digestive issues, tension, fatigue, moodiness, lack of focus, they're just the beginning.

Long working hours and with self-care being deprioritized and picking food for convenience over nutrition, it depletes your body even faster. Yet you can turn this around. With faith-driven tiny habits, you can find the time and energy to start implementing better for you actions and choices.

Today I'm going to address physical and environmental dimensions of wellness. So you have some ideas for next week as we get back into habit building to being able to promote those areas of well-being. Also, I'll be revisiting your vision of work-life harmony so we can continue to build out your wellness toolbox for stress management.

Let's go ahead and start with prayer. Lord, thank you for bringing my dear friends to listen today. Please help them find the motivation, guidance, strategies, and tactics to reduce stress and improve work-life harmony.

(1:17 - 4:22)

Thank you for designing and creating this wonderful world for us to live in. Help us see how we can modify our environment to better reflect your glory so we can also feel more safe, secure, calming, and pleasant, which will help us relieve stress. I praise how miraculously you designed us, including our physical forms.

I am more than grateful for how you have graced us with these amazing temples to house your Holy Spirit and experience this life before we join you in the everlasting. I feel privileged to have a responsibility to care for these creations of yours. I gratefully fulfill my duty to care for my body and environment in a way that allows your will to be done and reflects my love for you.

I pray all is well with every listener, healthy in body, renewed in mind, and strong in spirit. As they reduce stress and improve work-life balance, may they know your will and your love. In Jesus's name, amen.

In case if we haven't met before, I'm Sharon McCall with Whispering Fields Wellness. Today in Grace Over Grind, I'll be identifying how making a few small changes in your physical health and changes in your environment can help you to reduce stress and improve work-life harmony, allow you to start making those changes to achieve your goals of thriving and flourishing. As I get into physical health, I want to make sure you are aware of my underlying bias and belief.

It's a little bit different than other coaches that are out there. First off, you are bio-individual from your DNA to your mind to your spirit. There is no one else like you.

Physically, even if you had an identical twin with the exact same genetics at the time that you were born, from the life that you've lived, the thoughts that you've had, the experiences and its impact on your epigenetics and microbiome, you would be totally different today than that identical twin. This is how beautifully God designed our bodies is so that we can adapt to whatever is occurring in our lives to being able to have the best likelihood of survival. As a result of this, I firmly believe that God made every single one of us to be unique.

Yeah, there are some common things in regards to what body systems do. My heart, your heart, they work the same way. But within, deeply in terms of who we are as a being, a body, mind, spirit with the Holy Spirit indwelling in us, we are unique and also physically in the temple that we have to the Holy Spirit.

And because you are unique and created to fulfill part of God's plan for you, only you and God know what is truly optimal for you and what is required to heal you. God knew you before you were born and before you decided what faith you wanted to follow. He has put in your cells that inner wisdom of what your body needs to thrive and to flourish.

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Think about a paper cut. Your body heals automatically. You don't go tell it, hey, heal that paper cut.

It does. So God has this inner wisdom that's inside of all of us. And then once you make a decision to become Christian, you get that Holy Spirit that's indwelling in you.

But let's just get back to our physical being, our physical temple. So as you think about it, there are things that are in our environment that have been around for centuries. There are some things that are brand new and that are novel exposures that man has created in the last century or so.

So if we take a look, alcohol, dairy, grains, some people can consume them. Some people can't. Their bodies physically can't handle them.

And so this means that even though God designed these foods, they're not necessarily appropriate for some people in the way that he created you. So how can people end up blanketly saying that every single thing that man creates, fallible man, is safe for you to eat? Okay, so there are probably some things that in your foods or that are approved by the FDA, whether you know it or not, that you may have a sensitivity to. There may be things where the combination of the quantities that you've consumed in your lifetime or the combination of different ingredients, they are having an impact on you.

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And so this is what I mean by it's up to you to know what's working for you. Only you and God knows truly what's working for you. Because what works for somebody else, that identical twin, it may not work for you.

So just to end up being on the safe side, I always end up advising my clients just to go back to the basics, okay? Foods that we've eaten for generations, that are part of your tradition, your family's traditions and heritage, and the activities that we've done traditionally over time, these are all things that our bodies have adapted to and are more likely to be the right ones that God wants us to eat and to do. And so when in doubt, simplify and see what happens. Use whole foods to being able to address what's ailing you.

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So I'm not going to, you can tell I'm super passionate about this, I'm not going to go drag us down into a rabbit hole, but it is fair to let you know. So if you have a particular inclination of, okay, I only want pills, I only end up wanting a shot to being able to solve all my problems, I don't want to do the work, we're going to have some disagreed differences of opinion. So just want to lay it out there before we get going.

So let me get back to the topic for today. So we're continuing our discussion on the eight dimensions of wellness and lifestyle. I've been using SAMHSA's model.

I find that this model, while simple, it's effective for any of my potential clients, but also anybody that I meet in my volunteering to support mental health and substance abuse recovery. So today, we're going to go over physical and environmental. The foundation of physical well-being, I'm pretty sure you can guess at the main pillars, most of us have been given some form of health training through the course of our lives.

It's whatever you ingest, however you ingest it. And I also include in this definition, the preparation of the things that you ingest. For me, for example, cooking is a great hobby and a way to unwind, as well as making sure that I put enough love and care into what I'm nourishing myself and my loved ones with.

Then the second part of physical well-being is all about what you do. It's about physical activity, rest, sleep. And then a third area of this is in regards to preventive care.

So if you have areas of concern, being able to get the care and taking action on it. Some of you may need professional intervention to being able to address what's going on in your life. But just keep in mind, as I said, philosophically, I believe that the more that you focus on what you ingest and what you do and keep it really simple, your body will start healing itself and being able to get you stronger, less stressed as a result of that.

So moving on to the foundation of environmental well-being. It's all about safety and security, having a pleasant and soothing space. And that could be wherever you are at the moment, at work, home, out in the community.

It's your natural environment. Some things to keep in mind for environmental well-being is making sure you get exposed to natural lighting at different times of the day, access to fresh air and water. And just honestly, for me, this is a really big one, enjoying God's beauty and majesty.

Just getting outside, looking out a window, it really can help me shift my perspective from whatever was stressing me out and getting me so tightly wound up. That look out that window, that step outside and a breath of fresh air and a bit of sunshine, it reminds me that there's a much wider world and how small whatever it is that I'm worried about is in the greater, bigger picture. So there's no need for me to create unnecessary suffering for myself by buying into some of these thoughts and beliefs that we've talked about in the prior weeks.

And all of these have an impact on well-being. So just a quick couple of questions. So feel free to pause the video as we go through and answer these.

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What does physical health mean to you? Is it a number on a scale, a body image, a test result from the doctor, feeling energized, vibrant, good? What is physical health for you? And if you struggle with this, what does it mean to be unhealthy, to be discomforted, and then flip it all around? So thinking about the environment. So what's your safe place? What helps you relax? What attributes does that safe place have? And how can acknowledging the answers to both of these questions help you relieve stress? What clues are there that can end up guiding you to improve your current stress management plan? I find that most people have a lot of knowledge already on how to make better-for-you choices. It just hasn't been put into application.

We get bombarded across the internet, on the news, in the media, all this advertising. You generally have an idea of what is that next right step for you. So let's talk about a couple of the basic foundational items.

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Like, you know if you're getting enough sleep or not. You can tell in the morning, do you wake up rested, energized, able to get on with the day? Or do you need more sleep or a higher quality of sleep, right? For physical activity, you know if you're sitting in your chair all day, too long, not getting enough movement, and you're starting to feel that physical tension build up in your body because you're not moving enough. You can end up feeling it in your muscle tone and your ability to do more physical activities.

You can tell if you're plowing through breaks and not giving your body its chance, middle of the day, to have these moments to recover and to recoup. And you can also tell if you've got safety and security. It's all in the way that you feel.

What is that thing that's next right step for you? You know what that next right step is. Now moving on to food. This is a little bit more complicated because food people have put so many emotional connections on.

And for others, it's just something that people feel that they can control. I physically put this in my mouth. I know I can know exactly what it is.

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So if you have a tendency to want to control things, this is often an area that people go after. So when you're a high achiever in a stressful role, you may have tackled some of these things depending on what your interests are. If you're one of these that likes to get into the bio hacks or being able to control your eating, like I said, as part of your micromanagement. You may have done some of this work already. It's hard for me to say where everybody is because they're coming at such a different point. I've met folks across the whole spectrum as I've worked with them.

There's individuals that their next right step is just to cut back on the soda. It's being able to reduce empty energy and the sugar and the caffeine that's just winding them up and then leading to big crashes in the afternoon. To others that are fine tuning sub ingredients and what they have sensitivities to and they're trying to avoid secondary toxins from modern agriculture or animal husbandry practices.

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So depending on where you are in your own journey, you know what that right next step is for you. And then on top of this, food also gets really complicated by food philosophy. Some people are animal based, plant based, kind of in between and then a zillion and one different flavors of diet.

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So food is highly personalized and unless I'm in a one-on-one conversation with you, I really can't advise in regards to what that next step is. So you need to trust that you know what is the next step in what's better for you. So as you look at what you know from everything from the sleep that I mentioned to the food in regards to what's needed to improve your health and energy, what's the next natural step for you to have more energy and to give your body a chance to repair itself more? As the body repairs itself more, you're going to be able to be in more optimal condition and more resilient.

So we're going to go a little bit deeper as we go into today's exercise. So before we get started though, we're going to end up having you go back and review a couple of the things and pull out some of the items from prior episodes. So hopefully you've gone through those.

If not, it's just a chance for you to go back and look in the catch-up. So first off, it begins with reviewing that Christian identity statement. Remember, identity focus changes are more effective than outcome focus changes.

And so what we're doing is being able to focus on your vision of what work-life harmony means for you and who you are as a person, as who God is calling and created you to be. So you can go from identity to process to outcome. So pull out that statement, whatever it was that you came up with that really resounded with you from based upon a biblical reference.

Then you also want to pull out that vision of work-life harmony. So we had done a Venn diagram type model with body, mind, and spirit. We'd gone through and identified kind of what, where you are acting and behaving and thinking and feeling like the person that you want to be, that God is calling you to be.

And then where you have some opportunity for some growth. So you want to take a look at that Venn diagram because we're going to use that then for reference for today. So you can either use that document or I'll give you an alternative if that was something that you hadn't done or if that was not the right kind of activity for you.

Because I get it, everybody has different ways that they want to express themselves. Another way that we can do this is to, besides using the Venn diagram, is to continue with mind mapping. Some people like mind mapping better than Venn diagrams.

It kind of gives them a little bit of structure to work off of, to build up their ideas and to extrapolate it all out. And when they put it down and then pick it back up a couple days or a week later, they've got better sense of where they had left off. So we're going to go through a vision mapping exercise that's based on the mind map today as the exercise.

So just to describe what mind mapping for your vision of wellness is, is you're going to put at the center that who, what that vision of wellness is. You've got your identity statement at the top and then you want to go through and have a bubble off of that vision, just what your kind of summary statement is of who you want to be. And then kind of go through each of the different dimensions as a spoke coming off of that main one.

And then go through each of the different subcategories and just kind of blow it all out across the things. Again, like I said, you might have a couple of outcomes that pop up, but you can always end up turning them around and refining your identity statement a little bit more and who you want to be based upon as you lay this all out. So for today's exercise, let me tell you a story and I'll show how it works into this example of mind mapping for your vision of wellness.

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This lady was a senior manager. Her son had just started middle school and had decided that he really wanted to play Little League. His elementary school friends hadn't really been into it, but now that he's at the new school, his new friends were.

And so this was important for him to build up his skills pretty quickly so he could play with them. So since they'd played for years, he wanted to do a lot of practice at home. So her husband and him were already practicing.

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And with him in middle school, she'd recently been realizing, you know, he's growing up so fast. I got to start getting involved. And this was a really good activity for her to join her husband and her son because she had played softball when she was in high school and college.

A lot really rusty because she hadn't done anything really physical in a while. But it was something that she wanted to do and she felt it was really important and this was a timely way to kind of kick it in the butt that God's given in the situation for her to take on her responsibilities as a parent a little bit more. So though the problem was is that she had a high travel schedule and really long work days.

Already her husband and son were practicing while she was usually just at work or on her drive home if it was a time when she was in town. So she really wanted to make this work. So with some thought, her identity statement that she used to drive her habit building and to guide her vision for this phase of her life was based upon Proverbs 17, 6. And she had decided that was pride of her children.

She really wanted to make sure that her son walked away from this time of his life with some great memories, not just the skills, and that she was in those memories. And so as part of her personal meditation, she'd really included 1 Corinthians 9:25-26 for her focus on her personal training and then Proverbs 22:6 on starting children off on the right path. Because this was a kind of a big deal for her son and she was excited to support him through this.

Now that I've shared her story, now it's your turn. So up above you'll see that I have a blank version of a mind map that could be used for any focus on the physical part of well-being. So what, who do you want to be and what do you need to do to being able to become it as it comes to physical well-being? So just like in that last example, she knew that playing baseball and practicing with her son was a key part of her being able to be pride of her children.

That was so important to her. So take a moment and just do a mind mapping exercise in regards to that. So while you do that, I'm going to go ahead and continue on with the story in regards to this lady.

So as we work through this, she decided that if she could run multiple short sprints in a half an hour, then she could keep up with the pace of the practice that her husband and her son had. She'd chase the balls and do whatever was needed. And then with any hitting and throwing, because those were skills that she hadn't used in forever, she would just build those as she played, but she needed to build up that endurance to keep up with the activity.

And for her, physical well-being, it's not weight loss. It's not anything to do with the numbers with the doctors. It's about living fully and being involved with her loved ones.

And I'm sure she did get some other benefits because she lived a pretty sedentary life. We never really talked about those because it was always focused in regards to that work-life balance that she was looking for, that she was striving for. So as you think about your life, how can you break down that what you want to be as from a physical well-being standpoint into specific skills or habits? We'll take all of these and we'll turn these into habits next time, but I want you to go through and do that process.

How do you get from your vision of who you want to be, defining it clearly enough and kind of breaking it down so you can turn it into some of these skills and habits? So if you have any questions on this exercise, please email them to me at Sharon@whisperingfieldswellness.com. If you do take a little bit of time to commit to this exercise, I know you'll find something useful for you to help reduce stress and improve work-life harmony. Small changes that can be done the next time you go to the grocery store might even come up. You may not even need to go through and do a tiny habits approach.

That's the nice thing about the food stuff. Sometimes it's just a swap for something that you already do and it's already embedded in your routine, just switching out for better for you. In next week's episode, as I mentioned, we're going to get deeper into habit building on these dimensions of lifestyle and well-being.

We're going to really focus in on that how to use some geographical types habit building. So if you haven't downloaded the habit guide yet, it's available for you to jump right in. So I'm pretty sure you want to know, so what happened with the lady? Was she able to play baseball with her son and how did her son do? So as it came to work, it took her a little while to figure out how to reduce and change her travel schedule.

So it was a little tough initially at the beginning, not the morning part. So she was really smart on the morning part. She started running in the morning.

So what she decided to do is that instead of checking her work emails as the water was brewing for her tea, she just started doing sprint exercises in the house and then ended up getting on the sneakers and going outside and crisscrossing the backyards. And so it was really sprints and not a long distance run. It wasn't too bad.

So she'd go sprint one way and then walk a little bit and then sprint again. So she really did figure out how to make it kind of start by occupying time that she's already using to do something else. And while she's running, she can still think about whatever it is that she needs to do.

So she was able to just very easily embed the morning part in her routine. The part that was a little bit tougher was in the evening to make sure she got home on time. So it did take doing some things with her work habits and productivity to make those changes until the change in travel came.

Because once the change in travel came, for any of you that have traveled for work, you know how much downtime there is. It's not like you're effective and productive and working through all that time that you're on the road. So it made it so much easier and she was honestly able to pick a couple of extra things up that was part of the deal that she'd made to reduce her travel is that it allowed her more time to be productive and working on things in the office.

So she was able to get what she wanted, which was to have more time with her son and her husband and to form these memories that he's gonna have his entire life of them as a family building these skills and just having the laughter of fly balls and crazy running across the yard to go and chase after a ball. So I'd say that that was a pretty successful story from her standpoint. So to close this out today, let me go over a summary of what I've covered.

I talked about bioindividuality and then talked a little bit about physical and environmental well-being and I hope with those questions you're able to come up with a couple of ideas of what might be something else you can do to add to your stress management plan. What are some of those actions you can take to improve your wellness toolbox and equip you and build your resilience? And the last thing we did was another focus on a work-life harmony exercise continuing on how do you envision who you can become through faith-driven tiny habits. So I really hope you enjoyed today's session.

I am firmly convinced that if you just take any of these small ideas that you've had and being able to put them into place and take action on them, you will reduce your stress and improve work-life harmony. And the more that you lean on your faith, it makes it so much easier. Through God, he can do so many things if you just let him in a little bit of your life, a little bit more than you have been.

Starting to listen to that innate wisdom and to Holy Spirit to guide you on that next step. And then whenever you get stuck and you're in that weakness, just recognize his power and his strength being able to help you to move forward and to move on. So I thank you again for your time today.

If you want to work with me, so you can put these stress recovery tools together better and go deeper, click the services link below. As a stress recovery coach, I'm here to help you explore more of what underlies your stress and imbalance and ensure that you have the motivation and accountability to make the changes you desire in your life. I know you can reduce stress and improve your work-life harmony.

I'll see you next episode. Have a blessed day!