Monday Mindset
– an uncommon approach to school, sports, and life –

Today’s Monday Mindset: How to Manage Stress – part 2

Welcome to your Monday Mindset where you discover how to be your best so you can give your best.

This is part two on managing stress.

If you haven’t listened to How to Manage Your Stress- Part One, go back and listen to part one first.

I want to give you a few more tips to help you be at your best when you’re dealing with stress. We all wish we didn’t have stress in our lives, but we can’t get around it.

If you let stress conquer you, it will. So how do you prepare yourself? How do you dig your well before it’s needed?

Here’s two additional ways:

1. Deep Breathing – Before I go to sleep every night, I take 5 to 10 slow, deep breaths. This is utilizing the lower third of my lungs, actually known as diaphragm breathing. To duplicate they this, I breath and push out my belly button as I take the breath in, hold, and then exhale for 8, out of your mouth. Push your belly button back down towards your spine, or towards the bed if you’re lying down. The benefit helps to shut off adrenaline glands, your adrenals will stop firing and you’ll actually rest, and it’ll reduce and alleviate stress. The deep breath, that’s one. The second breath (and this is going to sound like the opposite should be true) actually inflict stress upon your body. It’s the best way to help you cope with stress.
2. Ice Bath – How do you inflict stress upon your body? According to Wim Hof, known as The Iceman, he recommends actually getting into an ice tub or an ice bath or an ice-cold shower, every single day. I heard it for years. I finally gave in and said, “Let me try this.” It was tough. And then I fell in love with it. What I fell in love with was how hard it was, the challenge. Starting first with 10 seconds in the ice cold, then a minute, and then finally an entire shower. I enjoyed the challenge of doing this every single day, even when I don’t feel like it. This builds your mental toughness, you feel amazing, you feel electric when you get out of the shower but it also builds courage.

When you inflict that level of stress on your body, it better prepares you for the stresses of the day. It prepares you to conquer any stresses you experience so that stress doesn’t become your enemy, it becomes your friend.

Every stress response you have in your body is helping you to be able to overcome that stress. Your stress responses are actually your friend, they’re giving you what you need to be able to meet the demands that are placed on you. You don’t have to get stressed out by everything that comes your way.

In fact, when you start feeling the stress in your body (your heart’s beating faster) remind yourself, “This is my body rising to the occasion for whatever the demands are that are placed upon me.”

Those are a few quick tips to help you manage stress more effectively. Give the ice cold shower a try and work your way up. It’s tough at first, there’s never a day that I don’t think, “Oh..this..whew, here we go.” But once I do it, man, I love it.

You’ll love how you feel when you get out, when you inflict that level of stress on your body, you can conquer anything. Use the deep breaths before you go to sleep at night, it’ll help you sleep better, in addition to alleviating stress.

There you go.