Breaking the Stress Cycle | EP 437

Access The Episode Webpage here.


In this Monday Minisode, we're focusing on a simple yet powerful practice that can change how you navigate stress in your daily life. No matter where you are—you can release stress and find calm, even in the busiest of moments.

By the end of this episode, you'll have a practical tool to shift out of overwhelm and into a state of presence that not only soothes your nervous system but also invites more joy and awareness into your everyday life. 



It’s all about creating new habits that support your well-being, so you can thrive, not just survive, in your work and life.

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https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/connect-with-sheila-botelho/id1527363160 I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

Chapters

• 0:00 Managing Stress, Achieving Presence
• 5:13 Practicing Presence for Stress Relief

Transcript

Sheila: 0:00

Feeling stressed. While this may be a dominant state you experience each day, it doesn't have to be, and your overall health will improve when you learn how to loosen its grip on you. Hi, welcome to the Connect with Sheila Botelo podcast. I'm an entrepreneur, self-care strategist and creator of the Seasons self-care app. I'm an entrepreneur, self-care strategist and creator of the season's self-care app. I'm committed to helping you reconnect to your purpose, elevate your well-being and build your version of a happy, successful life.

Sheila: 0:35

You're listening to a Monday Minisode where I share an insight designed to help you live into what lights you up this week. Think about how you're feeling right now, in this moment. What are you doing? Are you driving your car somewhere? Are you on a walk? Are you doing something around your home or office? How are you feeling in your body? Are you aware? I just want to share with you that stress seems to be one of the top feelings people will share with me when they're chatting with me about how they're doing. They're really, really busy. They're feeling a lot of pressure.

Sheila: 1:12

Stress is kind of the order of the day for many, many people. I've been there myself and there are times when I'm experiencing that if I've got a lot going on in a day, and some stress is good right, like when we're going to the gym and we're lifting a heavy weight. We're putting stress on our body, on our bones, and that helps to make them stronger, and so a little bit of stress can be good for us at times. So a little bit of adrenaline can be helpful at times. The challenge becomes when stress is the leading emotion or feeling in our bodies, long-term, when it's kind of leading the charge every single day, when you're looking at your calendar and it's stacked and you don't have any breathing space and you don't know how you're going to get it all dealt with. And not just that, all of the underlying stress that maybe goes unaddressed, like things that might be happening at home. If you're worried about your kids or your loved ones or your neighbors or friends who are going through things and you're carrying that with you, that kind of stress can really take a toll over time, and these days that we live in there is no shortage of finding stress.

Sheila: 2:25

Even if you're having a great day and things are going well in your own life, you can easily find stressful situations around you, and so it becomes really important to find ways to release stress and to be able to replace it, even with something that's better for our overall wellbeing, for our bodies, for our souls. And there are so many ways that we can do this, and there are different stress relieving activities that people involve themselves in just naturally as part of a cultural thing, whether it be music or dancing, or getting together with friends letting their hair down and watching a funny movie or something like that. Really, you always know, I'm going to say, getting out in nature is a wonderful way to release stress, and I could list so many different things that you could do. And because this is a mini-sode, I just wanted to share a simple thing that you can do anywhere you are to be able to really tune into something to release stress for yourself. It's something you can do at any time of the day, wherever you are, whatever you're doing and when you access this. It can then become a habit over time, when you really start to practice it, when you become mindful of this, and it involves one word, and that word is presence, when you, no matter what you're doing and if you're going through an experience of feeling overwhelmed and stressed, when you tune into the present moment of where you are right now. It involves your mind, but it also involves your body and your senses, and so I invite you to try this, if you feel safe to close your eyes if you're not driving also, take a moment now and just close your eyes, take a deep breath and breathe. Just feel where you are right now, at this place in time. Just start to feel the sensations in your body. You know. Feel like. How does your body feel? Do you feel the breath coming in and out of your lungs? Do you feel like air or wind on your skin? Do you feel warm? Do you feel cool? Do you feel like air or wind on your skin? Do you feel warm? Do you feel cool? Do you feel hungry? Do you feel tired? Do you feel excited? Do you feel anticipation in this moment? Like, what is your feeling right now and what do you hear? Tuning into your senses is really, really helpful with coming into a place of presence Like right now.

Sheila: 5:13

I'll give you an example as I record this it's raining outside. I just realized that I'm like, ooh, what do I hear? And I hear the rain softly tapping against the roof of my house and the wind is blowing a tree kind of against my window, so I can hear it scratching a little bit, and I do find listening to the rain incredibly soothing, but that's what I'm hearing. And what am I smelling? My son got me a beautiful candle for Christmas and it's like a pumpkin spice kind of smell, but very, very subtle. So I can smell that very. I don't have it burning, but it's just sitting there. I haven't lit it yet today. I can smell that. And what do I taste? I just had some matcha, and so I can kind of taste a little bit of that, you know, having just had that. But and so that's. And then what do I see?

Sheila: 6:13

As I look around, I see some beautiful dried flowers that my bonus mom gave me for my birthday in the summer and they're sitting on my table and they make me feel really joyful because I remember the exchange we had when she gave them to me and the card that she wrote me. It was really beautiful exchange we had when she gave them to me and the card that she wrote me. It was really beautiful. So let's see, that was sight, sound, taste. We didn't do touch. So let you know, how do you feel? Like give yourself a hug, how does your body feel Right. So there's all of these senses.

Sheila: 6:54

When you tune into them, it brings you into the present moment, and it's something that you can do at any time, anywhere. You can be in a boardroom meeting, you can be waiting for an Uber, you can be sitting in a room waiting to go into a meeting or into an appointment somewhere you can be driving. Taking this time to be present calms your nervous system, it slows your heart rate and it really brings you into a state where you can release some stress. And when you practice this throughout your day, over time it starts to become a habit. I love how we can create new habits. You build new neural pathways in your body. You build new kind of just responses that you turn to as well, and so if you find yourself hitting this kind of stress button constantly, try to catch yourself and it'll just start to come naturally to you. And when you find yourself having that presence, you'll also find that you'll start to access more joy in your days, because, honestly, until I looked around and looked at that flower arrangement, I hadn't thought about that memory for a while. It was just a quick moment and it really made my heart swell.

Sheila: 8:16

So we get to do this, you know, and sometimes we look around. We might see something that makes us feel sad, or maybe it might make us feel anxious. But we get to go deeper then and just ask, okay, why am I feeling that way and how do I want to feel? Right, like just stopping and looking around and tuning into our senses gives us the state of presence to see, well, how am I really doing? And sometimes you might find, whoa, I feel amazing. This is great.

Sheila: 8:41

Sometimes, if you're doing this when you're stressed, you feel like, wow, why am I so stressed and do I want to keep feeling this way? Do I have to keep feeling this way? What do I need to change so I don't feel this way anymore? Sometimes it's something as simple as presence that will change everything in your life. You might make one different decision because you're tired of feeling a certain way, and that is so powerful because nobody can change but you. If there's something that you want to change in your life and certainly you know being able to be in a community of people or at least have one other person like witnessing this, I really believe that when we can be more present with ourselves, we can tune into that impact that we want to have in the world, and when we do that, we start to do things that are good for ourselves, and so then we don't burn out. And when we're doing that with a group of people who are feeling the same way, wanting to feel a similar way in their life, you almost can't help but make that beautiful shift. How are you accessing more presence? How are you releasing overwhelm? How are you moving through to the life that you truly want? Because this is your one beautiful life and you get to feel good right now. And why not? Why not you? Why not now?

Sheila: 10:04

Thank you so much for listening. I'm grateful that you are here and I would love to hear how it lands for you. So please feel free to reach out, send me a DM, rate and review this so other people can hear it. Share this episode. You know, I always ask because sometimes just one little thought can change everything for you or for the people that you care about. So thanks for being here. I hope, wherever you are, you tap into that presence that is available to you right now. Thank you for listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Big blessings.