- Good morning, good life, everyone.
Welcome back to Amy TV, where we come together
to help you go after the life you want.
Stress is unavoidable.
Yes, there are good stresses in our life,
but we're here to combat the bad ones, aren't we?
Today, I'm gonna share some things that I do,
whether it's every day or just periodically,
for me to keep my stress low and my productivity high.
(upbeat rock music)
As much fun as it is to go after the life that you want,
things pop up in life that don't make it so easy.
Feelings happen, and I personally think
they just tend to get in the way.
Okay, not all feelings, but when you start to feel negative
due to stress, it turns out, it's doing a lot more to you
than just affecting your mood.
The American Institute of Stress actually found in a study
in 2014 that 77% of people in the US report experience
with regular physical symptoms caused by stress,
and 73% report experience
with regular psychological symptoms caused by stress.
They also say that there are seven top causes of stress
in this country, the number one being job pressure,
followed by money, health, relationships, poor nutrition,
media overload, and sleep deprivation.
While these are all things that may or may not go away,
and we can continue to improve on them, we need to get clear
on how we can relieve stress so we can at least manage
and not get torn down by the inevitable.
Me being someone who is obsessed with not being torn down,
I guess that's something
I should talk to my therapist about,
I'm gonna share some things that I do
to keep my stress from making me less productive.
Before we can beat stress, you know what time it is.
I gotta share some Twitter gratitude with someone special,
and today, I'm shining a light on Don Crane.
Don, thank you so much for tuning into these videos.
I acknowledge you for your time and attention,
and thank you for retweeting my video when it came out.
If you would potentially like to be featured here on Amy TV,
all you gotta do is follow me on Twitter
and retweet my latest video when you see that tweet go.
You can turn notifications on to increase your chances.
That's a great idea.
And you really can't miss it.
It's just a very large photo, usually of my face,
with an all-caps title.
Shout-out to everybody
who keeps leaving comments on these videos.
They don't like my all-caps titles.
I don't intend to change them.
For everyone that is watching and retweeting
and subscribing and all those things, thank you so much.
It means the world to me.
This episode of Amy TV is also sponsored by Care/of.
Travel season for me is picking up.
I am going after my goals, I'm going after the life
I want, and I cannot afford to slow down.
So to make sure that all things are functioning properly,
I take my vitamins, and if not for Care/of,
they would not be the right vitamins,
because Care/of customizes vitamins for me,
and you know I like everything custom.
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which I believe you do, then take a moment
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I just wanna give you a quick play-by-play
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The first thing I wake up in the morning and do
is take care of my body, and so that means a lot of water,
but also my skincare.
So I will do my cleanser and toner,
and then while I'm waiting for all of that to set,
I will take my Care/of vitamins.
I'm using the lemon water that I also prepare
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After I take my vitamins, I pat some eye cream on
and I brush my teeth while that sets,
and then I throw on moisturizer and sunscreen.
Yes, sunscreen, five a.m., doesn't matter.
And then I'm good to go.
I highly recommend you check out Care/of,
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Why would you not at least give it a go?
All the details are, of course, in the description below.
Okay, here's what I do to relieve stress in my own life.
First and foremost, my favorite thing in the world is sleep.
I get plenty of sleep.
I make sure to get seven to eight hours.
If it's one of those days where I'm like,
ooh, I did not get enough time today,
I don't get enough time tomorrow, I really could go
for six hours to sleep, emergency situations only.
I am always getting at least seven.
But sometimes there's a six in there.
It's just every quarter or something, maybe once a month.
Stress will sneak up on you like crazy if you are exhausted,
so please stop telling yourself that you don't need sleep
and that you'll sleep when you're dead.
It doesn't work that way, okay?
I hate to break it to you.
Meditation, this is one that is not going to be
for everybody, but I have started to enjoy it more and more.
I did it for 30 days straight, you saw my video about that,
and it has helped me so much that those moments of the day
that cause stress just because an occurrence,
something that could have just happened and this is life,
I find myself remembering the calm moments of my morning
when I meditated for 10 minutes, and it is so helpful.
It helps me deal in a big way.
It helps me see the big picture,
and I do not stress out as much because I've been
practicing mindfulness and self-awareness.
This isn't for everybody, like I said,
but if you are thinking, maybe your mind is racing so much
it would be great to have a few moments it wasn't,
or at least a few moments you tried to slow it down,
'cause we're not perfect, I highly recommend you check out
some meditation tactics, however that looks for you.
You can use an app, you can watch a YouTube video
and try to do it, or you can just sit
in silence and set a timer on your phone.
Working out, working out. (Amy claps)
I hate working out, I hate working out, but it works, sorry.
I feel so much better, tremendously, over the top,
when I know that I've gotten my workout in,
or at least like today, I haven't worked out.
I know I'm going to as soon as I'm done filming.
But if I stick with the habit on a regular basis,
and we're talking about at least 80 to 90% of the days
that I wanna work out, I do, I can tell in my body
that I'm healthier, I'm happier, I have more energy,
and that just equals stress relief
when sudden stress shows up and you have to deal with it
or overall stress does not compound itself,
because you're just too easygoing and feeling good.
I highly recommend yoga as well.
I love yoga so much.
I feel like it's this opportunity
to not just work out your body, but think
about what you're doing with your body at the same time.
It can be very easy to lose sight of what you're doing
when you're just lifting dumbbells
or doing things with machines, but when you are
in complete control of your body, it's just another level,
especially when you're meant to look somewhat dancer-like.
That makes it special.
I also feel very together with myself
when I'm like, got my yoga mat over my shoulder
and I'm walking with my cute little yoga shoes
and I'm ready to go and I walk into a space
where I'm working out, and it is serenity
and quiet and candles and like, low music.
I live for that.
Massage and other self-care.
I cannot encourage this enough, especially for those of us
who do a lot of sitting in our life
or do a lot of standing around in our life.
Massage, allowing somebody to work out muscles
that you didn't really know were getting all tied together,
that stresses the body.
That can be stress everywhere else.
If a part of your body is in pain
because you're not taking care of it,
then your mind can get stressed out too.
So going to get a regular massage is something I try to do.
I wish I could say I'm getting in there once a month.
It's usually more like once
every maybe eight weeks or quarterly.
I've prioritized it a lot more than I used to,
but nowhere near as much as I do facials.
Facials are much more important to me.
(Amy laughs) But I do love a massage.
I try to work it in, 'cause I know
I give my body a really hard time,
as much as it may not be moving on a regular basis.
Shout-out to everybody that does hard labor for work,
because you need the massage even more than I do.
But if this isn't for you, if that's not your thing,
maybe it's just getting a pedicure.
Maybe it's just going and getting your nails done,
just taking care of yourself, doing the thing
that's stepping away from the norm and allowing
somebody else to take care of you, or doing some other
self-care thing that you don't make the time for.
Add that to this category.
Think about how you can incorporate it more.
It's helped me a ton.
It's very easy for me to stay on this hamster wheel,
and so I have to get off of it, and I incentivize myself
to get off of it by getting a massage,
getting my nails done, getting a facial, stuff like that.
I read in a book recently about the power of distraction,
and I find that I've actually started to work on this.
I'm not mastering it quite yet,
'cause it's very easy to just get caught up
in a stressful moment and let it take over,
but I do find that if I'm stressed about something,
if I don't have a solution, then that makes me upset.
I do not like not having a solution.
I try to distract myself from it, not in an unhealthy way,
not in like, a binge Netflix for a whole weekend
and not make good on my obligations way,
but distract myself for at least a little while,
enough time that it makes sense in that situation
to be able to reset and allow the feelings
to subside for a little bit so that a clearer mind
can actually come up with a solution.
To me, if there is stress in your life and there is
not a possible solution at all, it's either stress
that you have to deal with because it is bigger than you,
and that has happened to me in the last six months,
or it is stress that is absolutely completely unnecessary
somebody might be trying to put onto you,
or maybe you're accidentally putting it onto yourself.
That distraction is great for allowing the things
that don't matter to fall away and the things that do
to start to clarify themselves a little bit
as to how you can solve an issue.
Another thing I'm kind of new to but I'm really enjoying,
and I've talked about this a little bit in the past,
is oil diffusing.
So I have a little diffuser in my office.
I love putting the oils in there.
I actually, at a weird level,
have gotten obsessed with lemon.
I'll drink my lemon water in the morning,
and I will also have lemon diffusing from my diffuser,
and I'm like, cliche, come on, come on.
Do you just wanna swim in lemons now?
Okay.
I also really enjoy spearmint.
That makes me feel awake, it makes me feel fresh,
and before bed, I love to diffuse lavender.
So I've been trying to expand a little bit
on my nose journey of happiness,
just the things that make me happy to smell,
because of course seeing certain things would make me happy
or certain things occurring would make me happy,
but smelling something that makes you happy
is just a new opportunity to make that happen,
and that relieves stress in a lot of ways.
There are certainly experts out there that will tell you
exactly which oils will destress you,
and I don't have those answers for you.
You can look into that with your favorite oil company.
But for me, I just pick the ones that smell nice,
and I pop 'em in, and that works for me.
We're gonna call this one take a walk, as much as many
of you would like for me to call it move your butt.
(Amy laughs) Just take a walk.
Move your butt, but take a walk.
Just clear your mind.
This could be a distraction for you
in that moment that you need the art of the distraction,
the power of the distraction,
or, you just need to walk something off sometimes.
Sometimes a stressful situation, you just gotta take a walk.
I love to walk away from a stressful situation.
I don't know about you, I'm pretty good at it.
But keyword is walk, not get away, you know?
(Amy laughs) Walk it off.
Use the energy in your body to work through something.
Walk away.
Come back with something better.
Morning pages, this has been a massive one for me.
The amount of things morning pages
has been solving for me is really incredible.
I highly recommend you check out Julia Cameron's book
The Artist's Way where she talks in great detail
about what morning pages is,
but we also talk about it in great detail here.
So if you don't know about it yet,
you are new, hello and welcome.
Morning pages for me, three pages, unfiltered,
first thing in the morning, whatever is on my mind.
It's quite a boring read, if we're being honest.
But the nice thing is that it's so boring sometimes,
there's so much junk coming out of my head
that doesn't need to have a place in my life.
I get it out, I put it on paper,
and then it's just like, you close the book, it's done,
and a lot of that stuff, I don't keep thinking about.
Or if they're bigger issues and I am thinking about them,
I'm having a lot more clarity about it and less stress,
because I'm starting to articulate it into words
rather than leave it jumbled up in my brain.
Avoid alcohol.
You know I love me a prosecco, okay?
I do, I'm a wine drinker, and it makes me happy.
But, I actually try avoid alcohol when I am stressed.
It seems like you would do the opposite, right?
A lot of people will say, oh, I had a stressful day.
I'm gonna come home and have a beer.
Well, I don't tend to do that,
because I know that alcohol is a depressant,
and so if I'm just gonna further depress myself
when I know perfectly well I'm stressed out,
that just doesn't really make any sense.
I personally would rather go into a prosecco in a great mood
and make it better by having just one little drink.
So when I'm stressed, I avoid alcohol pretty much
altogether, because I know it's not a solution.
And I am just an addict of solutions, there you go.
High on solutions, is that a thing?
Hmm.
And most importantly, the last thing I'll say is just
the things that you have in your life on a daily basis.
What are your daily rituals?
When I wake up, I do my skincare, I feel amazing.
When I go to sleep and I do my skincare, I feel amazing.
When my bed is made, when I wake up in the morning,
after Vinn wakes up in the morning, actually,
'cause I get out before him, I love going
back to my bed at night and seeing that it's made.
These are the pillar moments in your life,
the journaling, the workouts, things like that,
that if you keep them consistent,
they will level you so that when peaking moments
of cortisol levels go haywire, you can manage.
If I didn't have my daily rituals,
if I wasn't completely obsessed with the vitamin taking
and the dog walking and all this stuff, I would not be able
to manage some crappy email that comes in and ruins my day.
All right, let's share what we've learned with a tweetable.
"We don't have to avoid what we know isn't permanent.
"Don't let a moment define you."
All right, I wanna hear from you.
What are your best stress release tips?
How do you stay productive?
How do you combat the crap?
Leave it in the comments below.
I wanna learn more ways to do this for myself.
I'm selfish like that, you know.
And thank you again to our sponsor of this episode Care/of.
Check out their vitamins and get 50% off your first month
if you're one of the first 100 people
to click that link below and use my code AMY.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I appreciate it, as always.
Make sure you remember to subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love, and go after the life you want.
Cheers.
(upbeat rock music)
Lucy, you literally just bailed in the middle of my video.
WTF, why the face?