8 Simple Techniques to Relieve Stress and Anxiety
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, make sure that you give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get on this podcast, the more that the platforms like Apple and Spotify end up actually showing this to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to impact more people's lives and hopefully change the world in some sort of way.

Today, we'll be diving into eight simple techniques to relieve stress and anxiety.

I don't know about you, but one of the things that I have noticed with the world since 2020 is that since 2020, it seems like people, and this may just be anecdotal, but it seems like people are more stressed out and have more anxiety than they ever have. And so with the world only getting crazier, it seems, and technology taking over more and more and more and people being on their phones more and more and more, it's a really good thing for us to learn how to self-soothe, to be able to relieve our stress,

relieve our anxiety so that we can actually start to get ourself back to homeostasis. So let's dive into it. All right, so the first thing which I know you've heard me say over and over and over again, and the only reason why I say it over and over again is because it works the best, is your breathing. The first thing that usually shifts when you go into stress and anxiety is your breath rate. It usually starts to get more shallow, your chest feels more tight, that in turn makes your heart rate start to go faster. Your breathing is the first thing that you want to take control of.

six deep breaths at least, slow in through the nose, slow out through the nose. If your exhale is longer than your inhale, it tends to slow your heart rate down more. And so when we breathe deeply, we supply oxygen to our brain, more oxygen to our brain, which creates a sense of calm and alertness in your body. And it counteracts the fight or flight mechanism that exists inside of your brain. So physiologically speaking,

Deep breathing exercises activate your body's parasympathetic nervous system, which helps counteract all of the different stress-induced sympathetic nervous system activities. So just to explain it, when you hear sympathetic versus parasympathetic,

Sympathetic, even though it sounds really nice, sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight, the stress, the anxiety side. That's what you're in whenever you start to feel stress and anxiety. Your parasympathetic nervous system is rested and relaxed. That's what we're trying to get our body back to. And the deep breathing exercises actually activate that part of our nervous system. And what it does is it decreases your heart rate.

It reduces your blood pressure and it makes you relax more. And so one very simple thing to do, so you don't even really have to think next time you find yourself stressed or anxious at all, is to try something called box breathing. And a box breathing means that you inhale for four seconds, you hold for four seconds, you exhale for four seconds, you hold for four seconds. So it's just four, four, four, four.

Then you try box breathing and it creates this predictable rhythm and that predictable rhythm actually soothes the nervous system. And breathwork can actually retrain your vagus nerve over time, which then helps you build long-term resilience to stress. And so the first one obviously is stress. The second one, and it does sound corny and I thought it was corny for years, but I promise you this thing works,

is focus on gratitude because what you focus on grows. And so most people I have found in this world focus on what they don't want, what they don't want their life to look like, what they're afraid of, what they don't have,

what they used to have in their life that they don't have anymore, like the girlfriend who left them. And so what we need to do is we need to change your perspective. I guarantee you, if you listen to this podcast and you can afford to have a phone and you can connect to the internet in some sort of way, you're better off than probably 99% of people that are alive in this world.

And so we like to think about one of the downsides of abundance is that we tend to think about everything that we don't have. And we don't really think about everything that we do have. And so instead of thinking about what you don't have and what you want, think about all that's in front of you.

Because when you think about all that you don't have and that you used to have or that you're lacking in your life or what you desire, that alone can be really stressful. Or what other people think of us. And we often become consumed by what we lack, what we've lost, what we desire. And so...

When we constantly focus on the negatives, it will amplify our stress levels. And so gratitude, when you focus on it, taking just a few minutes to take all of your thoughts of gratitude and put them on a piece of paper just for three minutes a day can shift your brain's negativity bias. Like our brains naturally as humans are more negative. I've done an entire episode on the negativity bias if you want to go back and listen to it. But

As a human, there is no real, you know, when you look at us biologically, there is no positive and negative brain states. Negativity bias just means that we're focusing on fear more than anything else, which has kept our species alive. But if you're trying to thrive and have an amazing life, focusing on fear is not really what you want to be doing. And so when you do gratitude journaling for just three minutes a day, it's been shown through fMRI studies to light up the same reward centers as receiving money

from somebody else. So the same reward centers is if somebody called up and said, hey, I'm going to give you a thousand dollars, those same reward centers in your brain get lit up by just doing gratitude journaling for three minutes. And so that's one thing that you can do. Another thing that really helps people with gratitude is to try this thing that's called mental subtraction. Think of something good in your life and then imagine if it was taken away.

It makes you feel way more gratitude. It makes that thing way more valuable. Think about your spouse and then imagine if they were gone and you're like, holy shit. Yeah, she did piss me off yesterday, but oh my God, I would be wrecked if she wasn't here. Think about your children. Think about your house. Think about your job. Think about the amount of money that you've saved. Think about your car. Think about all of these things, each individually. What if they were taken away? And then you realize, man, there's a lot of stuff in my life I could be grateful for. So that's the second thing to help you out with it.

Number three is very simple. Go for a walk. Walking has actually been shown to be very therapeutic for humans. Forward motion, just seen by you walking forward,

is actually something that actually lowers your cortisol. So simply walking for just 10 minutes without your phone or headphones can actually lower your stress hormones immensely. And so if possible, it's also even better to do it in nature. There's been shown massive reductions in stress by being in nature and it lowers your cortisol levels, which is your indicators of stress.

and the natural environment promotes a calming effect, which is also referred to as biophilia hypothesis, which suggests that humans have an innate desire to connect with nature. So if you live near a park, go to the park. If you live in a big city, see if you can find a park somewhere around you.

Try to find a time where you can rent an Airbnb and go out of the city for a couple days. Walking in nature has been associated with decreased levels of depression over and over again. And so with natural settings, especially with greenery or with water, have a

immediate mood boosting effects. There's actually something that's in Japan that's called Shrinriyoku. I hope I'm not butchering that. It's a Japanese concept that just translates to forest bathing. And it involves immersing oneself in a forest environment. And it's been scientifically shown to have benefits for mental health and physical health as well. So just use time as a walking is just a moment where you can process your thoughts.

When your body moves, your brain can actually get unstuck and creativity will usually follow motion when you're walking around. So try it out. That's number three. Okay, number four is to write it all out. Journal it, put it down, take everything that you're stressing in your head and just put on a piece of paper because a lot of times the solution is way easier than you think that it is. And we will be right back.

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And now back to the show. There was a study that was done and it was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1986. And they found that the effects of writing about traumatic events, so instead of actually hiding from your traumatic events, but writing them down and putting them down, they found that the participants who wrote about their traumatic events showed significant improvements in physical and psychological well-being compared to those who just wrote about whatever it is they wanted to write about.

And they found that this form of expressive writing, essentially journaling about kind of traumatic or distressing events was associated with reduced stress

And so it makes, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense really like, hold on. So if I want to make myself less stressed, I should write about the things that stress me out. It's just kind of your brain's way of offloading it. And so you could try that for journaling. Another thing you could try for journaling is just asking yourself questions, sitting down, asking yourself questions, just jotting down the prompt. And if you can't come up with anything today, my favorite prompt is what do I want?

It's really open. And today you might want something completely different than tomorrow. And then the next day you might want something completely different. So you can say, what do I want? That's very open. Or you can say, what do I want in my life? What do I want in my business? What do I want in my relationships? What do I want in my relationship with my spouse? What do I want in my relationship with my children?

And then you can go deeper and ask yourself questions that go even deeper to each of your answers. You don't need to write for hours. Even if it's just five minutes of just expressive writing can release a lot of mental pressure. So that's number four. Number five, this is an interesting one. Get your blood levels checked. A couple of years ago, probably about four years ago at this point, I wasn't feeling like 100% for a few months. I felt like I was dragging. I didn't feel like I had a whole lot of energy. And I was like, man, I feel like something's off. I'm going to go get my blood levels checked.

It's the first time I ever did like a huge blood level check. My vitamin B and vitamin D were down. And so the doctor gave me, hey, this is the vitamin B I would take. This is vitamin D. Also for vitamin D, go outside, get more sun in your skin. Started taking them. And within like a week, I felt like a new human. And I was like, oh my God, it was just my blood levels were just a little bit off. And so...

If you have hormonal imbalances, especially like cortisol or thyroid issues, those can masquerade as chronic stress. And so you think that you're stressed out when in reality, you might just need to get your blood levels checked and see if there's some, you might be vitamin deficient in certain places. You might need to take some supplements or something. Try it out. If you have the money, go do it. Go do some blood work and see if your levels are where they should be. Number seven is not going to make too many people happy.

Have less caffeine. Try to get off caffeine completely if you can, but at least try to remove as much caffeine from your life as possible. Just see what happens to your stress levels, whether you completely get rid of it or whether you just massively reduce it. Sometimes when your blood levels are corrected, you'll realize also, like I said for number five, you'll realize that you don't need caffeine.

And the reason why I say that caffeine is something that we should try to try to not have as much of is caffeine triggers your adrenal glands to release more cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone. And so sometimes I sit down with people and have a conversation like, oh, my God, I'm so stressed. The very first question is, I say, how many cups of coffee do you have on average per day?

And sometimes they're like four. And I'm like, holy shit. No wonder why. Because when you have caffeine, it triggers your adrenal glands to release cortisol. And so I think a lot of times it's not that people are overly stressed. It's actually that they're overly caffeinated. And so when you feel that way, it triggers your fight or flight. No wonder why you feel so stressed. And so...

Hey, listen, I get it. I love coffee. I drink way less coffee than I used to a couple years ago. I drink way less coffee right now than I did four months ago. So if quitting caffeine feels overwhelming, that's fine. Try switching to something like green tea for a little while, which has way less caffeine. And so...

See if it works for you. If you're less stressed, it might be that you're just overly caffeinated. Okay, so that's number six. Number seven is to watch 10 minutes of comedy when you feel stressed out because laughing releases dopamine and dopamine lowers cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

And there's a lot of studies on how great laughter is for you. Laughter will show a reduction in cortisol levels. Like I just said, it's been shown to reduce the cortisol, which is the primary stress hormone. And when cortisol levels decrease,

people tend to feel more relaxed and less anxious. It also releases endorphins. When you laugh, it stimulates the production of endorphins, which is basically your body's natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote just a overall sense of well-being and also, which is really interesting, temporarily relieve pain.

It also causes, when you laugh, physical relaxation. After laughing, your muscles can remain much more relaxed for up to 45 minutes. Just the act of laughing involves many muscles in the body, and after the laughing subsides,

these muscles tend to relax more, which leads the feeling of just more physical relaxation. There was a study done in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and it examined humor as a coping mechanism and its effects on just the human psychological distress. And they found that humor

actually acts as a buffer to stress. So it shows when we laugh, we actually have our stress levels go down. So next time you feel really stressed, find your favorite comedian on YouTube, watch 10 minutes of it, see if it helps you out a little bit. And then the last one,

is to start to listen to slower music. There's music that's actually designed for relieving stress. What has been found to be, quote unquote, I don't know the truth of it, but I found this article years ago and it

you know, it actually works for me. There's an article that I found that talks about the most relaxing song ever made according to scientists in psychology. I don't know how they figured it out, but I guess they did. It's a song that's called Weightless by Marconi Union. Whenever I'm stressed out, I put it on.

Makes me pretty chill. I do some deep breathing, listen to Marconi Union, pretty good. And so just the things that you listen to can stress you out or calm you down. There was a study that was done in 2001 in the Journal of Music Therapy, and they found that relaxing music lowers subjective anxiety in the people that they studied. It also lowers systolic blood pressure and heart rate. The heart rate actually lowered in healthy males and females as well.

And so basically what they found is that if you listen to, if you're exposed to stress in some sort of way doing a task, well, what if we...

actually have you listen to before you go into the stressful task? What if we have you listen to calming music? And the people who listened to relaxing music prior to this stress-inducing task had less levels of anxiety, according to what they said, subjective anxiety. They had reduced systolic blood pressure and decreased heart rate compared to those who did not listen to music. So music will actually calm you down as well. So those are eight very simple techniques that I want you to try out to see if it'll help you just

Feel a little bit better. Come back to homeostasis so that you can look through the lens of being more calm versus being anxious and stressed out in your life.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you want to get some more coaching from me, you can check out something we have called Mindset University, which I run weekly coaching sessions every single week for a year where you can see me do coaching. You can see lessons that I teach as well. If you want to learn more about it, go to MindsetMentor.com.

Once again, mindsetmentor.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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