How do you overcome stress and relieve pressure? I mean in this day and age
where we're drowning in information we have so many demands on our lives
so much conflict and so much drama. and you don't have time for yourself.
How do you actually do this? How do we relieve that pressure?
How do we overcome that stress? I've developed three really practical methods
that I learned while I was a monk to overcome pressure in different areas of
life. So one of the things I often talk about is
a lot of us feel physical and mental pressure throughout the day.
And one of the reasons why we feel that is because
either our mind is ahead of our body or our body is ahead of our mind.
So I’ll explain what I mean with that. How many times have you had,
or anyone who's listening right now I'm sure you can relate.
How many times have you had it where you're running to your next meeting
so your body's moving really fast but your mind's going: “I wish we were still
in bed”. Your mind is still tired,
your mind's still feeling fatigued from the day before or whatever it may be.
And sometimes we have it the other way around. Your mind's racing and is saying”
“OK, we got this to do list and now we've got this to do and
now we've got this to do”. And your body is going:
“oh, why can't it just be Friday already?”, “why can't it be the weekend?”
because your body's tired. So what we generally experience in our life
is either our body is ahead of our mind or our mind is ahead of our body
and that creates friction. That's a disconnect in our life.
And we were just talking about this, that we feel that alignment
when what we think what we say
and what we do that's when we feel harmony.
So the way to do that one really practical tip
I do it all the time especially when I'm rushing onto stage
to speak at a conference or I'm walking into a meeting
and it's been a long day or whatever it is.
I focus on my breath. And what I do is that I breathe in
for the same amount of time as I breathe out. So when you breathe in for a count of four
and breathe out for a mental count of four and you imagine the numbers in your head
you want to breathe in and count to four in your mind
and you want to breathe out and count to four in your mind.
You're aligning your mind and your body. Because now your breath is breathing in for
four, the counts in your head,
then you're breathing out for four and the counts in your head.
So what you've basically done is taken either your body and your mind
whichever one was ahead or behind and brought them back in alignment.
The second one that I love for dealing with pressure and stress is Visualization.
And this Visualization allows you to deal with the pressure and stress
before the actual activity. What it does is it allows you to fast forward,
it's almost like time dilation you're fast forwarding an experience
and bringing it to the present where you're not experiencing
that pressure and stress, so that you can engage with it better.
see if you're scared, for example,
if you've got a really big meeting or a big pitch coming up,
If you lived that meeting and visualize that meeting now
and visualize yourself walking in with confidence visualize yourself not falling over on the
stage. Visualize yourself starting that first word
that you say with composure, with eloquence, with effectiveness.
Then when you actually walk into that space tomorrow
you're going to carry that energy with you. And this is one of the biggest mistakes we
make that we stress before,
but we don't prepare that for. And so visualizing what's about to come
reduces the stress. Because it lets you deal with it now
and it lets you plant thoughts and energy into the future.
And that's really what a visualization is doing.
It's letting you plant the energy of feeling composed and relaxed
now into that feeling. So what I do
before I'm about to go on stage I always visualize myself walking on the stage
and I do that to make myself feel comfortable and reminding myself
I'm not going to trip on stage you know, which we all fear as speakers.
And it allows me to feel confident before I walk on
So visualizing any experience, a meeting, a lecture, an exam
whatever it may be a test, whatever it is you're doing.
We think dwelling on our stress and pressure helps deal with it,
but it doesn't, dwelling on anything increases it.
So the only way to deal with it is to reprogram ourselves.
To reprogram ourselves, to deal with it how we want
in the aspirational sense, to create that visualization, that’s step
two. And step number three for me
which I love about again bringing the consciousness the first one we did,
Breath was the body, Visualizations for the mind.
And this one's for the consciousness or your soul.
And one of the ways in making your consciousness come alive.
So it's said that when we're in a coma
or even towards the end of our lives the only sense that it's still active is sound.
We can still hear sound and all of us, even when you wake up in the morning
you don't wake up to a visual, you wake up to sound .
Sound is able to wake you up. So similarly to wake up our consciousness
to really be alive in a space and to bring our best energy
we can actually become aware in any space even the space you're in right now
of the sound. sound is touching your consciousness at the
deepest level. even if we just take a moment right now,
I mean where we are and we test ourselves
just to observe the sound in this space, wherever you are.
That's going to bring your deepest attention to that place.
And that's why I always say to people that if we're always scared of being lonely
it's because we've never learned to be alone. If we never learned to be alone
will always feel lonely. But when we're alone we're able to just listen,
not to silence there is sound. It allows you to be present.
So those are my three tips for dealing with pressure and stress in any
scenario. Try different ones at a different time.