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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.

Are your thoughts helping you live to your highest potential or holding you back? The last time you were in a stressful situation, did your thoughts help you navigate through so you could get back to a state of calm and confidence? Or did your thoughts condemn you, pointing out how you're insufficient and unvalued, unloved?

[00:00:21] Were your thoughts magnifying the stress that you felt in the situation? Sometimes these thoughts and beliefs, you've had them from childhood, and you don't even notice them anymore. They're just such a part of the background noise that's in your head. You can shed these, though, and transform these into more self affirming thoughts.

[00:00:39] And it's not just through repetition of affirmations. Today I'm going to address some practical tips on how you can work with God on transforming these thoughts and beliefs to renew your mind. Let's slay some of these inner demons that are like roaring lions trying to devour you. Let's open up in prayer and then we'll get into the meat of today.

[00:01:02] 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. We all have these inner naysayers, demons, and roaring lions that hold us back and keep us trapped from and prevent us from fulfilling the potential that you have for us.

[00:01:25] Just like Eve grabbed that apple and ended up having such a different life, these thoughts, these beliefs are holding us back. Help equip us with spiritual armor and weapons so that we can slay these. Help us recognize what's holding us back and where we are too focused on ourselves in this world. Open our eyes to see how through you we can find the calm, peace, balance, and harmony we desire.

[00:01:49] 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 name, Amen.

In case if we haven't crossed paths before, I'm Sharon McCall with Whispering Fields Wellness. Today in Grace Over Grind, I'll discuss how to develop a plan to address internal stress triggers so you can relieve stress and improve work life balance.

[00:02:17] It's time to capture. challenge, and change what's going on inside your mind that's holding you back from having the life that you want. Stress recovery is about change, emotional and spiritual growth, and changing lifestyles so you can reduce your stress and improve work life harmony. Yet when it comes to change, the biggest obstacle most people face is themselves, and this is really in two different aspects.

[00:02:44] The first, Our ego and presumptions keep us from peace and health. As children, we bought into so many limiting beliefs and adopted automatic negative thoughts. Just as we were growing up, we didn't end up understanding really truly what was going on around us and didn't have the maturity to take a fully objective perspective.

[00:03:05] We created these safety measures when we faced what we thought of as children were adverse experiences. And so they've become. part of our natural blind spot. As we've grown up, we continue to observe this pattern and it reinforces these underlying beliefs and our thoughts and our experiences. And so they just become part of the way that life is.

[00:03:29] They're part of your belief system and your behaviors, because they've been going on as long as you can remember. So to overcome these obstacles, you first have to focus on growing in self awareness of what's preventing you from thriving and flourishing as God intends. Bringing these blind spots into clear view allows you to be able to identify where your defenses are, your demons.

[00:03:56] They are holding you back and preventing you from seeing yourself truly as you are and seeing yourself as God sees you, as who you truly are and the potential that you have, you're able to change. Now, moving into the second aspect of how people hold themselves back, our body, mind, and spirit are all currently conditioned to our current way of life.

[00:04:23] At the biochemical and cellular level, your physical systems are impacted by how you believe, think, feel, behave. And God designed us to be so efficient. There's so many things that run automatically or along conditioned pathways or habits. So any of those recurring patterns, any of those things that we've done with high frequency, it takes a lot to break that inertia.

[00:04:49] It's really, truly routed in our neural network. So, change requires breaking that inertia. It requires finding new pathways. So, even if you decide, and you've mentally, you're committed, your heart's in it, and you decide to regularly start training to do something new, it takes time still for the physical part to adapt to the new changes.

[00:05:16] Let's think about weight loss. So it requires so much more than just a decision, a desire, and a motivation to lose the weight. As you go through life, you have, with whatever you've been eating, and whatever your level of exercise is, you've trained yourselves to that level. So now as you start eating healthier, you start exercising more, thinking about how much your muscles complain when you start a new exercise routine.

[00:05:43] That is that physical inertia that you need to end up overcome, because your muscles change as you exercise more. Let's think about breaking an addiction. The body literally can crave what's bad for it just because it's gotten so used to the flood of these chemicals in the system and the way that the body responds to it.

[00:06:03] The brain starts creating distractions and excuses to try and slide back to what it considers the status quo. This is the examples of that internal inertia that exists inside of us as we're trying to make major changes. These fleshly desires and temptations will continue until enough of the cells heal or just get turned over through natural regeneration.

[00:06:26] Our cells are constantly replacing themselves. And so that's the same with when you're Reducing stress. In chronic stress, your body has adapted to this certain biochemical mixture that's going on throughout your body. And it needs to go through, in essence, a withdrawal period from these stress hormones and go through a renewal, get used to all of the good feeling hormones compared to the stress hormones.

[00:06:55] When you're chronically stressed, it takes a little bit of time to being able to get your cells and your biochemistry to adjust that new state, a new state of calm, confidence, happiness, and being relaxed. And also, the other piece of it is too, is when you're in chronic stress, the body defers natural repairs and maintenance because it's so focused just on survival.

[00:07:22] Whatever it needs to do for survival, that's what your body is focused on when you're stressed out. And so all of this deferred maintenance that hasn't been going on in your body. it's gonna take it a little bit of time to get it to optimal condition. And so that's why change can end up being hard. It's all of this neural and cellular conditioning that's happened with the way that we've been living before.

[00:07:48] Once you commit, And start following through with training and practice. It's all about long term consistency. It's not short term intensity. We'll go back to the example of going to the gym. Going to the gym once and working your tail off and to the point where like you're ready to collapse. You don't walk out of the gym suddenly with like huge muscles.

[00:08:09] It takes regularly going to the gym and being able to put the time and the effort to being able to to make the changes. This is not I can overnight thing. And if you think about it, what's happening physically is also needed then, spiritually, emotionally, so that we can being able to build ourselves, to reframe and renew ourselves, and to build a stronger relationship with God.

[00:08:42] Physical, mental, spiritual renewal, it all requires an extended period of time of commitment. God may grant you with that miracle and that magic wand that suddenly everything is so much easier for you, but the human side of it, our physical parts are still going to end up needing that time. additional work to keep us moving forward into and sustaining that life that we're working towards, that we know that we can end up having as we stand in God's grace.

[00:09:13] Once you commit and follow through with training and practice, change can occur. Perseverance isn't just about purpose, self control, motivation, momentum. It's about holding hands with Jesus and listening to Holy Spirit as you walk this journey together. It's having the loving support of others around you to help you stay.

[00:09:34] Stay focused on what it is that you want to achieve. Also, it's about surrender. God's will for you is always something beyond your imagination. We know his victory is assured. You may as well align your plans with what he has, with what he has in mind for you. That way you can thrive and flourish. Every time you give in to one of those inner voices, inner demons that's holding you back from that full potential, it's making you believe that lie that you are less than precious, that you are unloved, unvalued.

[00:10:10] It's holding you back from who you truly are and the life that you can live. And as you encounter times when in this world, those temptations, those fleshly desires, just the difficulties of things that are around you. When you're exhausted, hungry, feeling alone, or angry, and you can't move forward and you're weak, God is there, and he can make you strong and help you through.

[00:10:41] He will transform you and give you the strength if you let him. If you keep saying, I can do this on my own, I can do this, I can figure this out all by myself, you're going to keep banging your head against the same wall that you have been, leading to chronic stress, And this is why I love Tiny Habits, because it sets you up for that marathon and not the sprint.

[00:11:06] And with the changes, your whole being moves towards greater wellness. It's that pace of change that matches what's going on inside your body, inside you physically. That going for 1 percent better each day, it's not overwhelming. It doesn't get you stuck. You're able to Recognize and build that relationship with God, Christ, Holy Spirit, and with the support of others, being able to keep moving yourself forward into the life that you want.

[00:11:40] Less stress, more work life harmony. So let's dive in more on automatic thoughts and limiting beliefs that we talked about last time. After you uncover one of these, change doesn't occur just by making a decision or telling yourself. Don't do that no more. That's not going to end up making the changes that you want.

[00:12:03] All you're going to do is increase your frustration if you try that type of tactic, or if you just use affirmations to cover it all up. It doesn't address everything that's going on subconsciously. There is a process. for you to train and to practice on. And it begins with self awareness, prayer, and self evaluation.

[00:12:23] We talked a little bit about this last time. Really, it all comes down to asking Jesus, what do you see in me that I can't? Ask for his help, Holy Spirit, to guide you to rise above your opinion of yourself, and to see where these demons in these inner voices are holding you back. So with self awareness, you can begin to capture, challenge, and change what is holding you back.

[00:12:50] Also, you can begin to identify the stressors where your perception of a situation is not reflective of reality. Remember, we talked about fortune telling and mind reading last time. As you look at the patterns in your stress journal, you may have noticed that so much of work related stress, it's all about focusing on the outcomes that you don't want, all the reasons why you can't succeed, it's the things that you do or to prevent people from having a poor opinion of you, or that you're trying to control everything.

[00:13:28] But you can't. Does that pretty much summarize some of the patterns that you're seeing in that journal of what's causing you stress at work? So reducing the impact of any of these patterns of internal stressors, it's about accepting reality. non judgmentally and with compassion and recognizing where you have control.

[00:13:51] Let me share a situation from my career in manufacturing. One thing you should know, safety and quality are always number one. First rule, gotta follow. So we put a lot of processes and systems in place to ensure that we could keep thing, everyone safe and our consumers safe as well by having high quality product.

[00:14:13] Yet there are times when we ended up having major failures. And here's an example of one of these situations. I was early in my career as a leader, and we had a quality problem in the plant I was responsible for that was significantly impacting several business KPIs. I was leading a team of experts to figure out what the root cause was, and we had resources also assigned.

[00:14:36] To figure out how to mitigate the issue and make sure that we could get safe and good product out to the customers. I was totally stressed out mentally. I was working through all the catastrophic risks that end up could end up happening and everything that could go wrong and is part of our risk plan.

[00:14:56] I'd had resources and the team stretched out as much as possible to prevent these worst case scenarios from a personal standpoint. I kept telling myself that. Nothing I did was good enough, and that I couldn't manage, I was in this trap of imposter syndrome. I didn't believe that I could get the group to solve it, even though we had some of the company's best experts working on this.

[00:15:21] And it was driving me to work even harder and to get even more involved. And I was so worried that Despite my best efforts and the best efforts of the experts that we put on this team That I get fired because I couldn't lead the group to solve it. So I was totally freaked out and had this immense Catastrophe of what was happening going to happen in my personal life in my professional life to the consumers of the products the people on the team and it just I was so bound up in Terms of what was going on and I was You Because of all of this, I also wanted to make sure then that the leadership team, the people that we were reporting our results to, they only saw the team's efforts and my efforts in the best light.

[00:16:07] Sometimes I wasn't as timely as I needed to with a request because I was scared of what they would think of us. And that's it. Honestly, this issue was too big to micromanage, which would have been my natural inclination with this how stressed I was. So just ended up having a lot of tight controls and governance to maximize the amount of control I could have over the the team and the work that was being done.

[00:16:32] I listed through in that example a whole bunch of different factors of what was driving me to be stressed out, my internal belief systems. It was a challenging enough problem from a reality standpoint, but I was making it all worse in my head with all of these things that were going on for me personally and for the team.

[00:16:50] And so changing even one of these factors, it could have reduced my stress and started to change my perspective. At the time, I wasn't a believer in Christ and really wasn't reaching out to God all that much as it came to my work life. So if I was, I probably would have been constantly praying, but I wasn't there yet, so I didn't have any of that assistance.

[00:17:13] With taking all of this on, I got myself really close to the proverbial edge of crashing. But fortunately, I had some wonderful people around me. I had, I received some very well timed advice from a mentor, and he helped me to realize that, you know, truly, as an organization, we were all in this together.

[00:17:36] We were all doing everything we could to solve this problem and focusing on the things that are in our control. We didn't need to go work on all of these things that could go wrong that were outside of our control. And this just wasn't about me and my performance, and it was much bigger than the team and their performance.

[00:17:52] This was a big problem for the organization, and everybody was coming together on this. It was Actually when you step, when I look back, it was just amazing the amount of support that we got in this crisis and how well we all came together to work through it all. So the situation, don't get me wrong, it was still wildly difficult and challenging and high pressure, but getting that shift in perspective from my mentor really helped me reduce a lot of stress, almost like overnight, and it at least allowed me to start sleeping better, thinking clearer, getting out of that panic place.

[00:18:31] We were able to be so much more effective and I was able to end up feeling so much better. going through this. So it was a win win from that standpoint. So let's get into an exercise so that whatever situation that you have that's kind of like that, any of these big stress situations you're having at work, let's figure out how we can help you gain that perspective to help you reduce your stress enough so you can relieve a little bit of that pain that you're in right now.

[00:19:02] We've talked about stress journaling a couple of times, so hopefully you've had a chance to get that started. From your stress journal, What's a pattern of internal stressors that you find? Maybe it's a thought that you've been working on that with that four question Capture challenge change exercise from a couple of weeks ago.

[00:19:23] What do you think it is? Take a moment and just jot that down.

[00:19:32] Now for this exercise though I'm going to use an example from someone that I worked with. This person His stress came from when people that he delegated to, they didn't follow through, and it reinforced his tendency to micromanage others and to prevent another failure. Because he's like, too many people have not delivered, so no matter who you are, whether you've delivered on time or not, I'm going to make sure that you deliver.

[00:19:58] He was constantly micromanaging. And anytime somebody did not meet his expectations, he felt angry, and this caused resentment to build up in his interaction with anybody that failed to meet his expectations. He took their miss, their misses very personally, and it is a sign that they didn't respect him, and that their performance, and he really truly viewed that their performance reflected on him, and that his boss would then negatively impact on his review.

[00:20:27] Just a quick pause before I get into the exercise. There was a lot in this situation. If you were this person, what would you work on? And I think some of you are going to have some different answers than what he chose to. What underlying belief or beliefs do you think are hidden in this example?

[00:20:49] What we determined as we were working through this is that he felt that he wasn't valued, that people can't be trusted and are selfish and all that. only looking out for themselves. So in the case of one of the specific situations where his downline did not deliver on time, we started with the thought that he felt of, Julie does not respect me.

[00:21:14] He took it through the four questions and recognized that this was an example of mind reading. Remember those cognitive distortions that we went over last time? And when we looked at his tendency to micromanage, whenever he delegated to someone on his team, he noticed that he didn't do this with his peers whenever there was something that he'd asked one of them to do, or individuals higher in the organization.

[00:21:38] He was just trying to really exert this control over his downline. And in, honestly, he recognized that he was trying to control things that he really couldn't. He needed to let them do their work. It was their responsibility. It was what they were hired for. And as he was working through with this and on this for a little while, the Holy Spirit gave him this epiphany that his micromanagement actually stemmed from a lack of trust and respect for his downline.

[00:22:07] That mind reading when he thought that Julie doesn't respect me was actually he didn't respect her. And so he expected the same in return. Hmm. What are some of the things you're thinking about other people that are actually what you feel and think about them, but you're not quite ready to admit to yourself?

[00:22:33] Here is another type of journal exercise that you can use to come up with an effective action plan. It builds upon some of the exercises that you've seen in the prior weeks. So the first step is to being able to stop distorting reality. We're going to focus on those automatic negative thoughts. We want to capture, challenge, and change those.

[00:22:54] Last week we went through a couple of the common negative thought patterns. So, As we take a look at the example that we just had, the thought that we're going to end up working with is that Julie does not respect me. So as you take a look at this sample journal exercise, this is set up so that you can capture the and, that negative thought, and you want to categorize it based upon what we've learned about common cognitive distortions this last time.

[00:23:21] The captured thought was Julie does not respect me, and it is an example of mind reading. Then the next column, this is where you're going to challenge it. So last week I introduced four questions that can be used and to being able to make it pretty easy for you to go through. Here's a list of more comprehensive questions, um, to being able to determine if this thought is true, helpful, or good.

[00:23:45] The part that's new is how does this thought impact Or how would I act differently toward others if I didn't have that thought? So that's where you challenge it. So now moving into the right column, this is where you're going to change it. So you're going to end up turning this into a Holy Spirit truth.

[00:24:06] The easiest way is you just take the opposite of whatever you were thinking and then provide evidence of this. So the opposite of this statement is Julie respects me. And what evidence do you have of this statement? She has professional interactions with me. She's not rude. So maybe the truth is you don't know.

[00:24:29] She may or may not respect you based upon her behaviors. So the other things you want to look into are biblical references, sitting on it with prayer and meditation to see what the Holy Spirit gives you. And then once you've kind of put these different things together, you want to being able to rephrase that thought in a way that is aligned with Holy Spirit. You want to make sure that you are seeing through that deception, that initial negative thought, to getting clarity on what that truth is. And then from there, we can turn it into an action plan. So we're going to go back to one of the tools that we talked about a couple weeks ago, that action plan for improvement.

[00:25:10] Once you've identified that new thought that you want to have, you need to put it into action. Nothing will happen if you just write it down and put together a pretty little sentence about, Julie respects me. It's not going to change anything. You need to translate it into an action plan and being able to reinforce it through training and practice.

[00:25:29] There's a handful of different ways that that can work. We were able to come up with for him to put together an action plan. So he had, it just recently happened. So he decided to go and talk to Julie and find out why she was late on the assignment and figure out what needs to be done to make sure that this happens differently in the future.

[00:25:49] He'd also had decided that to make sure that the next time that he delegates to Julie that he would be a little bit more proactive about it and kind of build up some communication and then in general, cause he, as he was realizing and it was dawning on him that, you know, honestly, he didn't really truly respect his team, um, that he needed to use more gratitude to being able to find that respect for them.

[00:26:11] He included an end of date gratitude practice. So kind of as you go through this progressively. You want to identify what is that next action so that you can end up taking advantage of renewing your mind through the benefit of neuroplasticity. The more that you practice your new behavior, your new thought, the more you reinforce it.

[00:26:35] That's what it becomes. And whenever it becomes tough, you just reach back out to Jesus, God, Holy Spirit, and ask for that assistance being able to push, to get you through to the next side. So the other type of action plan that you can end up doing goes back to what we had talked about previously, I guess about a month ago in regards to action plans, where we'd had the four different questions to ask.

[00:26:57] Just to refresh your memory, that's what do you need to do in your routines to build resilience? What can you do to avoid the trigger? How can you minimize stress when a trigger occurs? And how can you reduce stress after you're triggered? So in this situation, delegation to his downline was the trigger.

[00:27:16] That was the pattern that he'd identified. And he realized that it triggered some of his protective behaviors. So he still needs to delegate. He can't get away from it. So he can't, really avoid it. He just needs to end up having a better strategy to being, to handle delegation. So what can he do before and after a task is delegated?

[00:27:37] And so he came up with a couple of different things to include in his action plan so that he can become more effective at delegating and reduce that tendency to micromanage. So in summary, this is how you go from capturing a negative thought, challenging it, changing it, and turning it into an action plan.

[00:28:01] This all starts though with that self awareness, being able to be clear on what your pattern of stressors are, and building up that self awareness, where are those blind spots, where are those things that are holding me up, making me feel so stressed about things at work, so that you can being able to turn that into action.

[00:28:21] This was a really quick high level run on these exercises. 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. So then what was the outcome for this individual after they had done all of this work?

[00:28:47] In time, as he practiced these things and reinforced the techniques, He was able to reduce his stress, become a much more effective delegator. Since he wasn't micromanaging all the time, it meant that he had time that he could free up for other interests and to do more with his life than just to be stressed out about work.

[00:29:08] Most of his micromanaging had happened after hours, sending emails after dinner to chase on the things he hadn't had time to do during the day. So this really did have a big impact on his life at home. So he could end up having a better quality of time with his family in the evening instead of being focused on what everybody else was doing.

[00:29:28] And truly, they were doing their job. And that's what he learned over time, is that they were more effective, more productive, his team got better results. As he backed off on the micromanagement and people were more comfortable asking for help and clarification and coming to him So they wouldn't wait until the 11th hour to come to him if there was an issue So, a great outcome for him, just from a couple of simple techniques.

[00:29:58] It did take a lot of mining, a lot of prayer, but he was able to effectively make the changes he desired. Will you commit to trying this out this week? Even a small part of this exercise can make a significant difference in your mindset. I know it will end up having an improved effect on you. on your stress.

[00:30:19] In next week's episode, we go back to our wellness toolbox, mainly focusing on physical well being. Sometimes that's a little bit easier to tackle than all of this mental well being that we've been covering over the last few weeks. To close us out, so going back to what I covered earlier, when we want to change, sometimes our biggest obstacle is ourselves, our ego and presumptions and our conditioning.

[00:30:44] It takes slow and steady training and practice to make effective changes. By identifying what's holding you back, that inner naysayer, that demon, that devouring lion, that's the first step. That's identifying what's holding you back. Uncovering the deception so you can slay it. You want to capture, challenge, change, and take action.

[00:31:09] Accepting reality non judgmentally and with compassion and recognizing where you have control. This is how you reduce stress and improve work life harmony. Whenever you can't move forward or you get stuck on your goals, God can help you and he will if you let him and you reach out to him. Just let him in your life.

[00:31:31] Doing the work of stress recovery, it brings you relief from stress. and improved work life harmony. You'll be able to thrive and flourish as God intends for you. I know this was a very high level run through. Click the link to download my journal worksheets to help you cultivate greater self awareness.

[00:31:50] There's more than just the tools shared today included in this download. Or, 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 can come alongside to support and encourage you and share a few strategies and tools to help you with mindset, lifestyle, and diet changes. I know you can reduce stress and improve your work life harmony.

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