Stop Stress From Driving You Insane

Magic is back from a short break to address a listener question from Tom about how to handle stress and pressure when you feel overwhelmed and too busy. Magic will discuss the differences between acute stress and chronic stress and offer some suggestions about what can be done about it, including building yourself some buffer time into your schedule.

Transcript

Speaker 8 0:42

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay, and I'm sorry, listeners, I've been missing for a few months now, and I really do apologize because my life has been stressful, and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. I actually have a listener question from a very dear friend of mine, Tom, and Tom wants some answers around stress. And I'll first of all answer Tom's question and then lead into why I've abandoned you for a couple of months. So again, my apologies. Tom says If stress is brought on by too many things happening at once and you don't feel like you have enough time, for example, you need to be somewhere, but, your car needs to go to the mechanics, maybe you've got a punctured tire that needs fixing, or, you know, this then delays your day, and then all of a sudden you have a client, a friend, a family member needing your help urgently, and they want you to come and help, but you can't because you, you got no way of getting there. And you already have plans in the evening that need to get sorted and a place and time, but your whole day feels out of whack, and your schedule's gone crazy. Then for the next day, you have something on, but all of a sudden you get two or three different things thrown at you, which all need to get sorted. This all adds to stress and pressure and takes up your time. Well, Tom, yes, it does, and that's just happened to me. So let's take this piece by piece. Let's look at what stress does. Now, we have two types of stress. We have acute stress and chronic stress. Now, when you get a flat tire or your car breaks down, that's acute stress. Your diary is thrown into chaos, acute stress. If your diary is continually in chaos and this is just the status quo, that's chronic stress. So what do you do about stress? First of all, you need to know that you don't live there, right? This is temporary, and things will work out. Maybe you need to make some changes. Maybe you need to step back from a couple of things, as I have, I'm so sorry again, from the podcast. But in the time that you are under this acute stress, things can be spiraling out of control physically and mentally, and it's very hard to step back at that moment and go, "Okay, well, there's nothing I can do about my flat tire or my broken down car." But there actually is. So in a situation like that, happens to everyone, so you call the client or you call the friend or family member and you say, "Listen, this is what's happened. So sorry. Let's get together when I'm all on board about this. I know your issue is urgent, but I'm no good right now. Let me sort my car out. Let me sort whatever it is out, and in the background, I'm going to be working on this, and as soon as I can, I'll sort it for you." Okay? Maybe that's not going to fix everything because their issue is urgent, but at the end of the day, they've probably had a flat tire or a broken down car or something happen somewhere along the way, so they'll understand. You can only do what you can do. You can only control what you can control. What happens around you, the things that happen to you are sometimes completely out of your control. Now, what happens when someone needs you to be somewhere? That was the other part of this, this question from Tom. Someone needs you and, you know, you've already got plans and then your whole day is out of whack, your schedule goes crazy, and then, you know, there's a flow on effect for the next few days. Well, again, it comes down to what can you do right now? Sometimes reaching out to people and saying, "I am so sorry that I am human, but we're all human and this is what happens," just reminding them that helps. What you can do with your schedule is maybe put some buffers in your schedule so that you've got time to use to make up for things that don't go right. I do this in my own diary now, certainly after the past couple of months. I actually put buffer times in my schedule so that if I'm running late with a client or if something happens with my family, I know there's an hour, maybe an hour and a half each day that I can utilize to catch back up, to get back on track. And if I don't use that time, it becomes me time. Right? I don't throw myself further into work. I actually take a break. If there's no chaos happening in the chaos time, then I treat it as that's bonus time for me. And so I have these little buffers in my schedule so that there isn't a backlog in the next few days, and so maybe that's something to try. Now, many people live with stress, high stress, and many people work with high stress. Anyone in the sales industry, and I, I don't care what you're selling, whether you're selling peanuts or, you know, brand-new houses, whatever, anyone in the sales industry has extra stress because you're chasing the sale, right? Your whole livelihood depends on the sale. So make sure you put time into your calendar, maybe for sales training, maybe for evaluating how your system of sales has been going for the past month, maybe seeing that you need to change a process to make it a more positive outcome to get the sale. R- do something to reduce the stress that is always going to be there because that's what sales industries are driven on, let's face it. So I hope that helps with your questions there, giving you some answers, Tom. Let's look at what happened to me. Have I been unwell? No Have I been doing my garden? You all know I love doing my garden. Not really, no. There's been a few major projects that needed fixing up, and yes, they got done. Why have I been absent from talking to you on the podcast? Well, I felt out of control. Now, we all know that my main behavioral function is control, right? It's been a basis of my life, but I felt out of control. Was something bad happening? No. No, it wasn't. What basically happened was I took too much on for myself, and I started feeling overwhelmed, and I started feeling less than and not good enough, and these are all issues from my history that pop back up again. And so for me, I needed to step back from the podcast for a minute so that I could see what was going wrong. And you know what? What was going wrong was I was over-committing myself in time. My schedule was out of control. I wasn't putting those buffers in for me time, so I had to start doing that. And, you know, now here we are talking about it. So what does my day look like now? My day looks like I look at my calendar in the morning. I know I've got everything color-coded. I've got buffers in there for me time or for catching up time, and I'm not out of control. You know, I'm at the desk at a reasonable time. I'm leaving the desk at a reasonable time, and then I'm making sure that I am present at dinnertime with my family. It's always been a big thing. You guys have heard me talk about this on this podcast. Family time for me at night is very important. But I had gotten to a point where my boys were talking to me, and I was thinking about other things. I was not being present. So for me, making sure that I am present, I'm looking after all the animals here, and I am able to flow through some of the more stressful days now with a lot more ease, and for me, with a diary that is not in chaos, a diary that is not making me feel twisted and sick and, you know, trying to juggle 'cause I'm not a juggler. Okay? I, I don't do that at all. So I make sure that my calendar and my diary gives me that flexibility to sort things out in a, in a really timely manner. And so this has alleviated my own stress. And, you know, I think it's really important that we look at how we can manage our day, how we can manage our time so that when things pop up, that we're not thrown into chaos. That's just one side of what's been happening. The other side has been, I'll give you a little bit of a nature lesson. We live in the country. I've spoken before, we have kangaroos on our property. Our kangaroos have been having joeys. And unfortunately, our foxes are starting to work in packs. Foxes are normally quite solitary. They hunt usually alone, from my experience here with them. But they've been hunting our kangaroos, and as soon as the joeys are out of the pouch trying to have a little move around and learn how to use their legs, the foxes are coming in and attacking. So the other part of what I've been doing while I've been absent from talking to you, is I have been learning how to deter foxes. I have been learning how to protect my kangaroos a bit more. And I've been watching in turn how my kangaroo mob behaves under stress. And you know what? This is a really wonderful example of nature and stress. And I'll tell you right now, our big male kangaroo, his name's Big Jimmy, he doesn't lose his mind when he's under stress, when he knows his mob is under threat from these foxes. He sits back for a minute and he watches and he commands and he makes sure that the mums with the joeys are in the center of the mob and protected. And you know, he really takes it in his stride in a time where he could be panicking, but he doesn't. And then, you know, the females, they could be panicking 'cause their babies are under threat, but they don't. They have a very structured way of protecting the young. And you know, I've been watching this, and in times where their whole lives are under threat, they don't panic. Now I look at humans, our time is under threat, and that's the first thing we do. So you know, this has been very interesting for me to learn to become more grounded. And what I would say to you is let's go back to the calendar. Make sure that you have, you know, whether you live by the calendar or whether you just, you have that in your head and you know everything that's going on, make sure that you have that time to become more grounded, you have that time to realize what's important to you. And you know, really stand in your truth. Don't let stress take over your life. Don't let your job take over your life. Don't let your friends take over your life. Make sure that you are the one driving your life, you are the one driving everything that you do every day, and that you're doing it for a reason. Don't just go on autopilot and say, "Well, this is what's happening, and this is what happens every day, and every day is the same." Because guess what? You're just gonna, you know, look at your phone or whatever and realize that two weeks have gone past, and you haven't actually lived. You've just existed. So look, I hope this helps. Again, you know, I'm glad to be back talking to everyone, and thank you, Tom, for your very insightful, uh, query there about stress. You know, I really hope that this brings you some answers, and I thank you so much for the, the question because, you know, it made me really assess how I was responding to my own stress and, you know, now here we are talking about it. If you wanna get involved, please jump onto Buzzsprout or any of your podcast platforms. Send us a query, send us some fan mail, and, uh, we'll talk further about what it is that's on your mind. But for now, go forth and create your magical life.