What is Stress Anyway?

What is Stress?

Stress is a response the body produces to protect and support us. How does your body use stress?

Stress is generally considered being synonymous with distress. Distress is defined as “physical, mental or emotional strain or tension”

When this type of stress is constant, it becomes harmful. Cortisol, a steroid hormone released by our bodies in reaction to stress to help get us through challenging situations. Scientists have recently realized that the brain also uses cortisol to suppress the immune system and tone down inflammation within the body. So, persistent distress depresses your immune system and shuts down your body’s ability to heal itself. Common conditions associated with chronic stress are heart disease, cancer, depression, eating disorders… the list is endless.

There is such a thing as good stress – good stress has a positive effect. It keeps us motivated, increasing our productivity. And as mentioned earlier, it produces the hormone which helps us through challenging situations.

So, the question is… How can you tell when the line is crossed between stress that is good for you and distress?

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to that question. The reason is that, what is good stress for one may be distress for another.

A good example of this is by observing people on a steep rollercoaster ride. Some are hunched down in the back seats, eyes shut, jaws clenched and white knuckled with an iron grip on the retaining bar. They can't wait for the ride to end so they can get back on solid ground. But up front are the wide-eyed thrill seekers, yelling and relishing each steep plunge and loving every minute of it. And in between you may find a few with an air of nonchalance that borders on boredom. So, was the roller coaster ride stressful?

How can you gain awareness around what’s causing you distress or bad stress?


STOP. This is the 1st step in identifying what causes you stress. You actually need to spend the time getting to know yourself better and recognize any symptoms you may or may not have.

Do a System Check. Figure out what you are tolerating. Tolerations are things that bug you, drain your energy and could be eliminated. We typically tolerate more than 50 things on an ongoing basis.

Here are a couple of tools to help you identify where you are stressed and what you are tolerating:

Clean Sweep

Stress and Health Self Test



Stress Release Trigger

We’ve taken the first couple of steps in maintaining healthy stress. In addition to these action steps it’s vital to create balance within your life. Balance is the key to health. It’s what we a coaches strive to help our clients create.

Even when we implement all these steps, we are human. We occasionally are going to have stressful days. We all know those days… nothing seems to be going right, we have a to-do list a mile long, everything takes twice as long as it should, we feel as though nothing is actually getting accomplished AND all of those physical symptoms we experience when we’re stressed start to creep up – headache, tight muscles, queasy stomach, heart palpitations.

What can you do when this happens? This is where the “Stress Release Trigger” comes in. You can train yourself to release stress in seconds. Here’s how it works:

Find a ritual that is relaxing for you. For some of you it may be taking an aromatherapy bath, a foot massage with lotion in your favorite scent, deep breathing with your favorite aromatherapy, exercise with your favorite music… whatever it is make sure it involves different senses and is easy for you to do every time you are stressed. So, for those of you who are constantly on the go and need something quick and easy, a few deep breaths with your favorite aromatherapy may be just the thing for you OR if you love to take baths (as I do) and you spend more time at home, this may be an excellent 15-20 minute ritual you develop for yourself.

During your ritual you want to empty your mind and focus on the senses that are stimulated by your ritual.

The key is training yourself to release stress with a trigger. It takes 21 days to make or break a habit. So, it is vital that you use your ritual EVERY time you are stressed for 21 days to train yourself in releasing stress immediately. Once you develop the trigger effectively, the moment you engage – the symptoms associated with stress … chaotic mind, headache, tight muscles etc., go away. Leaving you refreshed and re-focused and ready to proceed. For those few moments out your day, you actually get more accomplished than if you continue your day stressed out. My trigger involves a hot aromatherapy bath and literally I've gotten to the point where the second I completely submerge myself I am instantly relaxed. Try it and share your experience with "Stress Release Triggers."

Until next time...

Jumpstarting Productivity

I don't know about you, but I find that my days are most productive when I start my day early. I remember the most productive time in my life included a schedule of exercising, cleaning and reading all before 8 am. I had never been a morning person (still not) - still at that time in my life I had committed myself to that routine and eventually it was automatic. My productivity was high and I felt a strong sense of accomplishment. So, now I have been trying to get myself back into that routine so as to capture that high level of productivity and I just can't seem to get my behind out of bed in the morning.

I am the classic "snoozer." I always start with good intentions - I go to bed at a reasonable hour, I set my alarm clock for 6am..... and then 1-2 hours later after hitting snooze over and over I finally get going with my day.

I was starting to wonder if I would ever be able to get back into that routine and here I come across an article. Steve Pavlina produces a very successful blog and his How to Become an Early Riser definitely caught my attention.

He draws attention to the correlation between early rising and high productivity. Along with his observations around how much time you gain by rising early, he shares an interesting system for becoming a habitual morning person.

So, if you are like me and wish you were a morning person - check out his article and try it out. Let's see what success we have in our new commitment to ourselves. I'll keep you updated!

Until next time...

Breaking the Rules

I stumbled across a great blog - I Help You Blog and there is a fantastic challenge that of course I can't pass up. 101 Great Posting Ideas for Your Blog challenges it's readers to pick one of the 101 posting ideas and write a great post about the topic.

I have decided to focus on great food for thought that I found in a book I am currently reading called Breaking the Rules: Removing the Obstacles to Effortless High Performance by Kurt Wright.

He proposes that weaknesses do not exist, only strengths. One example he highlights is that you cannot measure darkness except in relation to light. Darkness is light measured in degrees up from zero, therefore you only posess degrees of strength.

So, it might look something like this: You posess two different characteristics, one is self-confidence and one is self-discipline. Previous to this you might consider self-confidence to be your strength and self-discipline your weakness. But, since weakness does not exist then you need to re-evaluate.

We recognize that we only have degrees of strength, so if we were to use a scale starting from zero, (0-10) where would you place your different strengths? It might look like this: self-confidence might be a 10 and self-discipline might be a 2. They both are strengths and self-confidence is stronger.

If you were to accept this belief as true, how would that change the way you operate going forward? What benefits could you see from adopting this new belief system? What would be different as a result of your new beliefs about yourself?


Here's another interesting thought Kurt brings out in his book - you probably are aware and familiar with the Law of Attraction by now and he points out that energetically we cannot recognize a strength in another if we ourselves do not already posess it. He challenges us to verbally acknowledge and engage others in conversation around a strength we notice in them. By doing this we ultimately provide ourselves with a mirror in which we are able to generate awareness by acknowledging and exploring our own strengths, which in turn makes them stronger.

Who do you know that you embody strengths you admire? How might you verbally acknowledge them this week? In acknowledging them, what do you notice about yourself?

I had fun writing this post and I hope you have enjoyed it. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this - share them!

Thanks to I Help You Blog for the wonderful inspiration behind this tidbit.


Until next time...

A Day of Caring

Often times when we start something new we go, go, go and then it's easy to start putting our self-care on the back burner. I'm finding this on my journey with my new coaching business - I am so excited and there are so many new things to explore. I have started to let some other things slide. So, I have decided that I need to get back to walking the talk and have declared today a day of caring. I am allowing myself to take a step back and care for myself today. I challenge you to the same. What is one thing you can do today to honor yourself? Here is an article I found to help with your day of self-care: Stress Management: Ten Self-Care Techniques

Enjoy & Until next time....