#11 - MindBites - 3 Of The Best Ways To Combat Stress!

Hey guys, welcome back to Mind Bites, our high-value short-form episodes, where normally Joe and I will pack as much information for you guys to take back into your day-to-day lives. But it's just me today. Joe's not here currently, so I'm doing this one on my own. One of my favorite things to talk about is stress, because I'm someone who gets stressed out very easily, and today we're going to talk about the three of the best ways to combat stress and in my opinion, subjectively, these are three of the best ones. Also, before we start, it's nearly Mental Health Awareness Week. I think it's the 13th to the 19th of May, so coming up in a few more days, if you're listening to this, it's going to be awesome, but please, through that week, check up on your friends, check on your family, as you should do, do always and make sure you know it's there, because it's going to be an awesome week where we can celebrate so many things and bring to light the problems that mental health are having in this country, in the UK at the moment, and just around the world, so many bad things happening. Let's pick each other up and, without further ado, let's get on with the three of the best ways to combat stress.

So first off, I wanted to talk about something Joe and I always talk about. It's just movement walking out, being in the sun. If you're in the UK right now, you're probably listening to this. You're looking out your window. It would be my luck that it's just chucking it down with rain, but it's really sunny at the moment. Be outside, put the phone away. I did this earlier. I had a very stressful morning this morning.

Exposure to sunlight. It called serotonin, which is associated with boosting mood and helping a person sort of feel calm and feel focused. Low levels of serotonin are associated with a higher risk of major depression disorders with seasonal patterns as well, which we've discussed before, known as seasonal affective disorder or sad. So it's really important be outside, get the right endorphins going in your body. The physical activity, such as walking, increases endorphin production, as I'm sure many of you know, which is known as the body's natural mood elevator. It engages the body in a way in a repetitive rhythmic motion that can lead to a mental state kind of similar to meditation. I feel and also, just just on, like a scientific insight as well. The studies show that moderate exercise can reduce cortisol levels as well, which is the stress hormone in the blood, leading to improvement in mood and stress over time. So just being outside, even if it's just walking joe says this all the time it doesn't necessarily have to be 10 000 steps a day, as everyone's saying. It's, it's being outside, you know when you're feeling stressed. Being in nature, even just putting your phone away.

People have listened to this from the first episode will know joe and I talk about all the time and that's probably our number one thing which we do for ourselves is we get so caught up in this world of social media and work and it's just so easy to not do the easy, not do the simple things. Well, that's a better way of saying it, and a simple thing is just opening the door and putting your phone down, but it seems so hard. But when you do it and you go for a walk and you can be in your head and think through the stressful situation is a game changer and people will be like tom. That's obvious. I know it's obvious. Go try it, because we're doing it every day and it's one of the best things we do. Secondly, this is something I do religiously at the moment and it's sort of like a stress management planning and you're probably wondering what the heck is stress management planning? So you can talk about things like I'm not a big journaler, but on that point, you can talk about things like journaling and reflection, so writing about stressful experiences. These can help someone process and manage the stress associated with the events that you're going through. So reflective writing has been shown to improve decision making and critical thinking in stressful situations. Not something I necessarily do, but I think it was important. I brought it to light because I know a lot of friends that have discussed mental health with me as a whole find it very useful. People like troy if you haven't listened to that episode, he said it's called scripting, journaling, the same thing he says that's the best thing he's done. But for me, this second part, which I have written down, is something I find most useful subjectively, but if you do enjoy journaling, let us know below because I actually find it very interesting one.

I'm someone who struggles with things like journaling. I'm not too sure why. It could be my ADHD and the concentration side. But this next thing I find the best and this is sort of like action plan having an action plan ready to go, so setting specific. You know whether that's achievable goals. Uh, regarding like stress management. So I'd sit down and I go on my calendar and I'd be like what's stressing me out? And I have a different. I use a thing called motion. So it's a really nice calendar where you can like color code things and things that are stressing me I'll put in the orange color or whatever color it is that day, but normally I put it in orange, compared to the blue and green which is usually there for the rest of my tasks blue and green, which is usually there for the rest of my tasks and in orange it'll be things that are stressing me, things which I know I need to take action on, but I'm I'm pushing them away, I'm procrastinating and I'm like I don't really want to do this today, but things I know I need to do for my own mental health, just to clear them out the way.

And I feel like people get very stressed when there's a stressful situation that's been given to them, something out of their control, and they just hide away from it and they're like, oh, look at it another day, I'll look at it here. I'm used to do that all the time and I feel like that built up massively for me and led to me getting the tears. That's my anxiety getting really bad in particular. But what I find very useful is just sitting there and being like at this time I'm going to address, to address that stressful situation. Whether I like it or not, whether I don't want to do it or not, I'm going to tick that off. And once that's ticked off, I feel so much better after this because I'm like, oh, I can do it. And then the next hour after that, there's one more stressful thing here I need to do today. Let's get rid of that and then I can lock in. I can do stuff I absolutely love, like making this recording. I love talking about stuff like this.

So if I was to go into this and I was feeling very stressed, as I have done a lot of the day and I didn't sort it out, I'd probably be rubbish on this recording. I probably wouldn't be able to think straight, I could be rubbish anyway. You know, who knows? I think I'm getting better at this stuff, but I could be very, very stressed out and you could hear that in my voice, in my body language. You know well if you're. If this was a video one, you'd see it on my face and I think it's just so, addressing it as quick as you can, understanding it's stressful and that stress isn't going to go away.

You can't hide from these things, especially if it's a work thing. You've just got to do it, get it done, make a proper plan, be it this time I'm doing this here and go and execute it. And that's, for me, is probably up there with the movement side of things. Obviously, movement's the main theme for the Mental Health Awareness Week as well, so being outside moving is number one and sort of a strategic management planning. So making an action plan to deal with the stress, to actively go and sort it and not let it eat you up, as I would do for a lot of my life.

And, lastly, you guys going to love this episode. It's with Jamie Clements. It's probably coming out in two weeks from now, so this is going to be released on a Friday, but this episode is going to be awesome and he talks about everything breath, work, and one of the most important ones which we discussed in there was a thing called box breathing, and this is for stress. This makes you feel calmer, bring your heart rate down, and I think it's An amazing one he did like a sort of a demonstration for us, which I will upload onto here in a couple of weeks time so you guys can go and do it yourself as well. So do go back for that, do look out for it. And box breathing is where also known as square breathing that was the other thing he said. It involves inhaling for four seconds, so holding for four seconds two, three, four exhaling for four seconds and holding for four seconds Two, three, four Exhaling for four seconds and holding for four seconds again, and this pattern is repeated several times. And the benefits of this what he was saying is Marines use this response and you know the body's overstimulated. It calms the body in stressful situations and this is by focusing on the breath. This practice can help clear the mind. It can improve concentration and also reduce anxiety.

I was someone who spoke about brocks breathing about a year ago. It's just because I I love things where you see like, oh, the marines are doing this. I just find that automatically just very, very cool. So I was like what is this like? Why marines doing this in an active combat zone, flying in on active combat zone? And when we tried it with jamie and he ran us through it properly. I'd done it myself, but having actually someone guide you through it was so different and I've tried to do it more and more since that interview we had with him, you know, today. I did it this morning when I was feeling stressed, which, to be fair, helped a lot. I did it outside, so I don't know if the little combination of the sun being outside as well, but I felt massively more relaxed afterwards. So please do give it a go.

That's box breathing. So the three we have for the three of the best ways to combat stress, in my subjective and Joe's as well, joe and I were pretty even when we discussed what our three would be is walking outside, movement, being in the sun, getting the good endorphins in and moving. Two, stress management planning and action plans. And three breath work. So box breathing, reducing your heart rate when you're in a fight or flight response you're stressed, you're angry, you're like, ah, the world's eating me up.

Give it a go, see what you think, and when the Jamie Clements episode is on, I'll make sure to come back to this if you guys send me a reply and send you the link as well, so you can do that. Five minutes of breathing at the end. But either way, they're my three of the best techniques to combat stress. I I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Sorry, joe can't be here. He's a way better talker than I am, but for the meantime, I'm Tom and I'm Joe, and this is Inside of Mind Mind Bites, but for the meantime. But anyway, thanks for watching. I'm Tom and this is Inside of Mind Mind Bites.