#28: Stress is Not The Enemy - How to Avoid Burnout & Use Stress As a Superpower.
You’ve been lied to about stress.
Everyone tells you it’s the enemy—wrecking your business, slowing down fat loss, and stopping you from perfoming at your best. But what if stress is actually the key to your success?
In this episode of The High Performance Gym Podcast, Keir Wotherspoon takes a deep dive into the science of stress, why cortisol isn’t the villain, and how you can turn stress into a tool for peak performance, fat loss, and mental sharpness.
Here’s what you’ll take away from today’s episode:
- The two types of stress: Why some fuels your growth while the other destroys it
- Cortisol superpower: Stop fearing it—learn how to make it work for you
- Burnout vs. resilience: My story on burnout—and what I did to come back stronger
- Mindset shifts that change everything: How your beliefs about stress shape your reality
- Powerful, research-backed strategies to regulate stress and boost your energy on demand
🔗 Resources & Links from Today’s Episode:
- Rethinking Stress: The Role of Mindsets in Determining the Stress Response
- Mindset matter: Exercise and the placebo effect.
- Huberman Lab Podcast.
- Yoga Nidra
- Waking Up App
Connect with me:
- Connect on Instagram
- Connect on LinkedIn
- 💌 Have a question or want to work with Keir? Email here with any questions → keir@keirwotherspoon.me
🎯 TAKE ACTION: Right now, Keir is offering a FREE Warrior Woman Energy Score Quiz & Training to help women over 35 lose 20lbs, double their energy and feel 10 years younger.
Take the quiz now → Quiz
Watch the FREE training → Training
🚀 Hit play now and start using stress as a weapon for success—not a roadblock.
Transcript
Welcome to the High Performance Gym podcast where we discuss practical tools to train smarter, recover faster and perform at your best in everyday life.
Speaker A:So whether you're an athlete or entrepreneur, chasing big goals, a warrior parent, juggling kids, career and your fitness, or you're in your golden years and refuse to fade away, we've got you covered.
Speaker A:My name is Kay Weatherspoon and I'm a health and performance coach and founder of LIFT Performance Academy.
Speaker A:At Lift, we deliver health and performance programs to female athletes and busy professional women of all ages.
Speaker A:For over years, we've worked with more than 700 clients, athletes, business owners and high achievers to help them train both their bodies and minds.
Speaker A:Our female orientated approach combines evidence based sports and nutritional science with hormonal health that enables our clients to harness the menstrual cycles and perimenopause without burning out.
Speaker A:Right now we're offering a free workshop for women over 35 who are juggling the demands of their career, family and fitness, but are held back by low energy mental fatigue and struggling to lose those extra 20 pounds.
Speaker A:You can find that free training in the show notes.
Speaker A:I want to see a world where all humans align with their unique physiology, master their minds and use health and performance tools to reach their full potential.
Speaker A:You've been lied to about stress.
Speaker A:Everyone tells you that stress is bad, but what if I told you that stress is actually the key to your success, whether in weight loss business or even just pairing.
Speaker A:In today's episode, I'm going to show you how to use stress as your secret weapon instead of letting it burn you out.
Speaker A:So today what we're going to do, we're going to cover how stress works and why it's not always bad.
Speaker A:What happens when stress turns against you, also known as burnout, and how to manage stress and turn it into a superpower.
Speaker A:Okay, so what I want to do for this episode is to get you to think about stress and little bit differently.
Speaker A:Because when you think about stress differently, you can then approach it with a totally different type of mindset.
Speaker A:And the mindset is what we're going to kind of touch on as well.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:But before we do, like let me be absolutely clear here.
Speaker A:Stress is one of the biggest killers, okay?
Speaker A:When we talk about stress, we're talking about chronic levels of stress because this can actually lead to what's called burnout, right?
Speaker A:So I hit burnout not once but twice.
Speaker A:But both experiences were completely different.
Speaker A:And this is the thing.
Speaker A:So when we talk about burnout, we talk about, well, the theory of Burnout.
Speaker A:The latest.
Speaker A: lach's theory of burnout from: Speaker A:And this is like three theories, three signs of burnout.
Speaker A:So it's emotional exhaustion, Emotional physical exhaustion, depersonalization, and a lack of accomplishment to personal achievement.
Speaker A:So let me kind of tell you how I was experiencing burnout.
Speaker A:So burnout was basically, I was working a lot of hours in the gym.
Speaker A:Now, a lot of people mistake work and mistake burnout is working a lot of hours.
Speaker A:But when you're doing work that you actually enjoy and actually brings you energy, then that's not really the same level of intensity.
Speaker A:Now, for my example in the gym, I was working a lot of long hours, but I wasn't getting the rewards for the work that I was putting in.
Speaker A:So I was doing a lot of work, doing a lot of stuff that wasn't actually giving me a lot of results.
Speaker A:So therefore, it was almost like trying to push a boulder that's not moving.
Speaker A:That's kind of what I was doing.
Speaker A:And I wasn't doing myself any favors.
Speaker A:So I wasn't sleeping on a nighttime.
Speaker A:I wasn't really dialing in my nutrition.
Speaker A:I wasn't seeing my family.
Speaker A:I was getting home and I was ready, and I was snapping a lot of my kids and my wife.
Speaker A:And I felt really sort of detached from what I was doing.
Speaker A:I become almost kind of cynical.
Speaker A:And when I was kind of in the gym, I started seeing, like, my customers and clients as problems rather than people.
Speaker A:And this becomes sort of really dangerous in terms of, like, your psychological state.
Speaker A:So it's not just a case of, like, oh, I've worked two weeks in a row.
Speaker A:I feel exhausted.
Speaker A:Like, this is a really deep psychological state.
Speaker A:You start to, you know, again, you use that kind of human connection.
Speaker A:And then the third part is that lack of achievement.
Speaker A:So again, if we look at how I was in the gym, it's.
Speaker A:I wasn't.
Speaker A:I didn't really feel like I was achieving much.
Speaker A:I was doing a lot of work, but I wasn't achieving a lot for the returns that I was given.
Speaker A:But if you start to actually see results in what you're doing, then that work then becomes purposeful.
Speaker A:But when you're just sort of like, you again, you're pushing that ball in, it ain't going anywhere.
Speaker A:Like, even if it moves an inch at a time, that gives you that energy to carry on pushing.
Speaker A:But if that ball is not moving, then you are kind of pushing against resistance that eventually wears you down.
Speaker A:And Burns you out.
Speaker A:Now the second time I got, I was burned out was very much.
Speaker A:It was a very different experience because the reason it was different was because I was very isolated.
Speaker A:Whereas where I was surrounded by a lot of people last time, and although I was doing a lot of work and I became really disengaged with everything and disconnected from the people I was around.
Speaker A:The second time I was isolated, I was spending a lot of time by myself in the bedroom because I closed my gym and I was trying to build an online business and the harder I tried, the actual worst results I was getting.
Speaker A:And again I went back into that habit of hardly sleeping.
Speaker A:I actually had Covid.
Speaker A:I got Covid.
Speaker A:I was actually quite ill with COVID and I was still getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning and working for 12 hours a day to try and build my online business.
Speaker A:Like this was the levels that I was at.
Speaker A:And it was ridiculous.
Speaker A:Looking back, you know, it was really sort of irresponsible to how I was behaving at the time.
Speaker A:But when you're under financial pressure, you know, you're not making any money and your resources are drilling quite quickly, then you know, you, you kind of in this sort of almost this heightened state of alertness, heightened state of anxiety and you just try and do everything you can to make it work.
Speaker A:But yeah, for me it just, it just kind of wasn't working.
Speaker A:And I remember actually, and I didn't experience this the first time, this is why it was totally different experience.
Speaker A:I didn't feel physically exhausted, I felt physically okay.
Speaker A:I was still training and I was still exercising and I felt actually pretty good about my physical self.
Speaker A:It was the emotional state, the emotional state was the hard part because I remember going into the supermarket and I vividly remember just standing in the supermarket and it was almost like I wasn't there.
Speaker A:It was like I was standing outside of myself and I was experienced like an out of body, it was almost like an out of body experience.
Speaker A:It was so surreal that it was just.
Speaker A:I just can't explain how it was.
Speaker A:And I was just so depressed and the anxiety that I was experiencing because, you know, I wasn't producing the results that I wanted.
Speaker A:That actually turned into a lot of, a lot of depression and I was just so low.
Speaker A:There was just nothing there.
Speaker A:Emotionally, there was just nothing there.
Speaker A:And it was a natural, really dark and scary time in my life.
Speaker A:And I just wanted to kind of bring that up and just so you can maybe you have experienced something similar.
Speaker A:But just to give you Sort of insights to what actually burnout is.
Speaker A:So let's not pretend stress can't be bad.
Speaker A:It can be absolutely detrimental when it's not controlled.
Speaker A:But on the other side of it, it can be absolutely enhancing.
Speaker A:And we're going to touch on that now.
Speaker A:But let's talk about cortisol, because cortisol gets a bad name, okay?
Speaker A:Cortisol is what everyone claims.
Speaker A:Oh, cortisol.
Speaker A:You've got to kind of eliminate cortisol.
Speaker A:Cortisol is bad.
Speaker A:It does X, Y and Z.
Speaker A:It destroys muscle.
Speaker A:It kills you.
Speaker A:Cortisol is a hormone, what's known as a stress hormone.
Speaker A:But I want to reframe this.
Speaker A:I want you to think a little bit differently.
Speaker A:I like to reframe it, and I like to think of cortisol not as a stress hormone, but as the alertness hormone, okay?
Speaker A:Because what we're going to use it for, we're going to use it as a superpower.
Speaker A:And that's what I want you to think about.
Speaker A:Think of cortisol, the stress hormone, is actually the alertness hormone that we're going to use as a superpower, okay?
Speaker A:Because it's designed to help you react to challenges.
Speaker A:It's the fight or flight response.
Speaker A:That's kind of what cortisol is.
Speaker A:You know, you get a increase in energy availability.
Speaker A:So you can either stay and fight or you can run away.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you think of it, like, as natural caffeine.
Speaker A:So think of it like as having a cup of coffee.
Speaker A:You have a cup of coffee, you get this boost of alertness.
Speaker A:Like cortisol is natural caffeine.
Speaker A:That's kind of what it is.
Speaker A:Well, that's certainly a good way to think about it.
Speaker A:So kind of sharpens your focus and gets you kind of ready for action.
Speaker A:So we think about, you know, more energy, more focused.
Speaker A:These things are enhancing these things that we need to pursue big goals, okay?
Speaker A:So when it's turned on, when cortisol is turned on, short term, it's enhancing.
Speaker A:The problem is when it becomes chronic, okay?
Speaker A:When it becomes chronic, that's when it becomes dangerous, all right?
Speaker A:Which we're going to kind of touch on.
Speaker A:But think of cortisol for this, for the purpose of this.
Speaker A:Think of cortisol as your superpower.
Speaker A:Too much and you burn out just enough, you're going to achieve those goals and more.
Speaker A:Here's a little mental model.
Speaker A:I actually done a post on this.
Speaker A:I think it was a while back now.
Speaker A:But what I've done, I had picture this mental model.
Speaker A:So I've got a fireball in the middle.
Speaker A:Okay, There's a fireball in the middle.
Speaker A:And that's stress.
Speaker A:Okay, let's call it, let's call it stress.
Speaker A:Let's call it alertness.
Speaker A:That's like your superpower.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:On the left side of that you've got burnout.
Speaker A:On the right side of that you have neuroplasticity.
Speaker A:Okay, so think of neuroplasticity is what we went through.
Speaker A:If you haven't listened to the podcast episode Neuroplasticity, go back and listen to that.
Speaker A:That was last week, so the week before, I think listen to that because then that will make a lot of sense.
Speaker A:Neuroplasticity is basically your brain's ability to adapt and change to its environment.
Speaker A:That's kind of what it is.
Speaker A:You, you can learn new things, you can learn new skills, you can break new habits, you can break old habits, build new habits.
Speaker A:And you know, our superpower is part of that process.
Speaker A:Okay, So I kind of want to hope you think I want to, I want for you to think a little bit differently about stress.
Speaker A:And there's a really great paper, there's a good research paper and it's by Dr.
Speaker A:Ali Crum and a team and it's called Rethink and Stress.
Speaker A:It's the role, the role of mindsets in determining the stress response.
Speaker A: as, this was actually done in: Speaker A:I'll link them all into the show notes so you can kind of go and look at them.
Speaker A:But it was this paper specifically that I wanted to kind of touch on because it was such a good paper and it was one of the things that I read and I was just like, oh, wow, this is game changing.
Speaker A:This gets me to think of things totally in a different way.
Speaker A:So basically what this study found was there was two types of mindsets.
Speaker A:This is what Dr.
Speaker A:Ali Krummer team found.
Speaker A:There was the stresses debilitating mindset.
Speaker A:So these were the people who thought of stress as bad.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:They thought stress was really harmful and they believed it was bad for them.
Speaker A:And then there was the other side of it where stress was enhancing.
Speaker A:And what they had done is they educated this group of people on why it's actually beneficial and how it boosts performance, learning and growth.
Speaker A:So basically you've got two groups.
Speaker A:So the first group believed that stress was harmful.
Speaker A:The second group believed that stress, stress could boost performance, learning and growth.
Speaker A:And these were the findings.
Speaker A:So those with a stress is Enhancing mindset.
Speaker A:They had better health, they performed better under pressure, and they recovered a lot faster.
Speaker A:So what this kind of study shows was that changing the way we think about stress changes how our bodies actually respond to it and how we kind of mindfulness around the way we perceive situations and.
Speaker A:And things that we're doing actually has a big effect.
Speaker A:Was another study done as well?
Speaker A:And this was on chambermaids, Just to keep with the theme here, by the way, it was done on chambermaids.
Speaker A:And what they're kind of doing is the tested.
Speaker A:They put chambermaids into two groups.
Speaker A:Again, it's very similar to this and what they did.
Speaker A:So chambermaids, you know, they're very active.
Speaker A:The change of beds all day, they're cleaning hotel rooms, doing all of these highly activity things.
Speaker A:And what that asked them at the beginning was, do you find your work as exercise?
Speaker A:And all said, well, no, we don't.
Speaker A:It's just work.
Speaker A:We don't see it as exercise.
Speaker A:So what they did is they split these two groups.
Speaker A:So they split them into two groups.
Speaker A:And then what they did with the first group, they didn't do anything.
Speaker A:They basically said, we're going to take some health markers and we're going to test you again.
Speaker A:And I can't remember how many weeks it was.
Speaker A:The second group, we said, we're going to.
Speaker A:What they did with them, they educated them on how actually what they were doing was beneficial.
Speaker A:You know, what they were doing exercise wise, it was actually beneficial for the health.
Speaker A:And what they actually found was with no interventions apart from that, only change in the beliefs.
Speaker A:The chambermaids who were put into the group where they were educated on the benefits of what they were actually doing, they had better health outcomes.
Speaker A:The lost weight, the blood pressure dropped, the cholesterols improved, all of these different things.
Speaker A:And the only stimulus was a change of belief.
Speaker A:But this is how powerful the mind is.
Speaker A:And just by thinking things a little bit differently, it's how our body responds internally that changes.
Speaker A:I want to give you a little bit of a story now.
Speaker A:This is.
Speaker A:This is kind of my personal sort of story, what happens every day of my life.
Speaker A:And this kind of relates to what we're going to go into about sort of stress.
Speaker A:So every morning I take the kids to school.
Speaker A:So that.
Speaker A:That's kind of my role.
Speaker A:So every morning we get the kids ready and then I kind of take them to school.
Speaker A:So by the time I leave the house.
Speaker A:Now, if you've got kids, you will relate to this, especially if you've Got kids under the.
Speaker A:My kids are nine, seven and two.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:The youngest one's two and she's just going through that irrational stage where, you know, it's very difficult, it's very hard work.
Speaker A:Love it a bit.
Speaker A:Absolutely love it a bit.
Speaker A:But, you know, if you've been there, you'll know how hard that is.
Speaker A:But anyway, by the time I leave the house, I'm like a pressure Cooper ready to blow.
Speaker A:Because you're trying to get all of these kids ready out the house and to be on time for school.
Speaker A:Okay, now we're in walking distance of the school.
Speaker A:It takes, if I took the car, it would take me three to four minutes in the car.
Speaker A:Ten minutes if I'm walking on my own, 15 minutes with the two boys, or two boys and a girl.
Speaker A:And 30 minutes.
Speaker A:Okay, if we've got uno.
Speaker A:So Una's our youngest.
Speaker A:She's like the common denominator.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:She's two year old, she doesn't walk very fast.
Speaker A:So, you know, it takes us about 30 minutes to get to school.
Speaker A:So I have two choices.
Speaker A:I can, one, I can take the car and be on time, school and even start my day, you know, 30 to 60 minutes earlier.
Speaker A:Or number two, I can walk and I can be late most of the time.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Number one is the logical option, right?
Speaker A:You know, get everyone where they need to be on time.
Speaker A:That should be like the go to get your way to be on time.
Speaker A:And that's kind of done.
Speaker A:Now, we used to live about 7, 8 miles away from where we do now.
Speaker A:So that meant that to get the screw, we had to take the car.
Speaker A:Okay, now this is what happens when you take the car.
Speaker A:If I choose option 1, this is what happens.
Speaker A:This is taking the car.
Speaker A:I still leave the house in a stressed out state because I'm still stressed.
Speaker A:I'm still like a pressure cooker.
Speaker A:Okay, Now I'm going to pack the kids into the car.
Speaker A:I'm sitting in the car.
Speaker A:I've got the kids in the car ready to go.
Speaker A:I'm still feeling that stress because I'm cooped up inside of this car.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Then I get caught up in local traffic so you can try and get to school.
Speaker A:Then I, then I'm getting stressed out even more because I'm sitting in this traffic, can't get anywhere.
Speaker A:We're going to be late for school.
Speaker A:Then I kind of get parked, you know, because the school is absolutely rammed with other cars and I can't get parked anywhere.
Speaker A:The kids into school, we're all stressed and then I get back in the car and then again we get caught up in traffic.
Speaker A:You know, we're back into that situation where all that kind of stress is building up.
Speaker A:And by the time I've got the little one a nursery, I feel burnt out, you know, because there's been for that 45 minutes from getting the kids out the house to getting the little one to nursery, it's constantly reactive stress.
Speaker A:I'm constantly reacting to everything around me, reacting to the kids, reacting to the traffic, reacting to everything else kind of going around me.
Speaker A:But what I actually do there, I'm reinforcing the habit of reactivity.
Speaker A:Okay, now let me tell you number two, because this is why I chose number two.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:My cortisol levels are high.
Speaker A:My alertness is high because that's what I need to get the kids out.
Speaker A:I need to be alert.
Speaker A:I need to have that level of cortisol streaming through our body so I can get everybody up, everybody out, and then we're good.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:I'm feeling alert.
Speaker A:The walking brings back, calms my nervous system.
Speaker A:So because we're walking to school outside, I'm getting fresh air, we're doing a nice walk, getting a bit of exercise that then brings my cortisol levels back down.
Speaker A:What I'm also doing is I'm reinforcing the habit of exercise to my kids.
Speaker A:You know, as far as I'm concerned, we can work on time management next year.
Speaker A:When Una's a little bit older, you know, she's a bit older, she's walking a bit faster, then we can start saying, okay, guys, we need to leave a little bit earlier.
Speaker A:We do this, we need to do that, this is the plan and we get there on time.
Speaker A:The age of Una is at the minute that ain't gonna happen.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Una is part of the journey.
Speaker A:She plays and she laughs with the boys on the walk.
Speaker A:You know that that means that she's happy and she's not stressed.
Speaker A:She's not getting bundled into a car, sitting in a seat and feeling all that kind of stress that we're all feeling.
Speaker A:The boys talk and make plans together on the walk.
Speaker A:Yeah, they have a little bit chat and they're not rushed and they're not feeling stressed out.
Speaker A:And then by the time I've dropped the kids off and I've walked back home again, arrive back home and I feel clear headed, I'm calm and I'm ready for the next challenge.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:And that is absolutely key.
Speaker A:It's getting ready for the next challenge.
Speaker A:If you have all of this, imagine you've had all of this built up stress for 45 minutes and then you're going to work, you're just taking that stress to work with you, okay?
Speaker A:And then that never.
Speaker A:That continues to be higher, continues to be elevated.
Speaker A:Okay, so why is stress actually enhancing?
Speaker A:Okay, so the first thing is, first thing we've got to think about is energy availability.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Imagine your body is a car, okay?
Speaker A:When you're calm, the car runs smoothly.
Speaker A:It uses energy efficiently.
Speaker A:This is you, you use energy efficiently.
Speaker A:But then when it's stressed, then it dumps extra fuel into the system so you can get shit done.
Speaker A:Okay, so example, you know, getting your kids ready on the morning, all of a sudden you've got this boost of energy availability.
Speaker A:You've got more energy to get everybody sorted and everybody out the house.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:This could be lifting weights in the gym.
Speaker A:So this could be going to the gym.
Speaker A:You need that energy availability to be able to lift that heavy set of squats.
Speaker A:It could be running away from a hungry lion.
Speaker A:You kind of get where I'm going with that.
Speaker A:It's that energy availability that you've got that instant strain of energy that you can perform that task.
Speaker A:Fight or flight, run or fight.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Then you've got the cognitive side of things, which is like the focus.
Speaker A:So imagine your brain is in a dark room with a spotlight.
Speaker A:So you've got a dark room in a spotlight.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:This is like acute stress.
Speaker A:We're talking about acute stress.
Speaker A:This is like that short term boost of energy, short term alertness.
Speaker A:And what that is, is a focus of light helping you to perform under pressure.
Speaker A:So you focus on that light on one particular thing.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:This could be like a work presentation, could be public speaking.
Speaker A:It could be figuring out how to climb a tree to escape that hungry lion.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So you need to be able to think on your feet.
Speaker A:You've got to be able to, you've got to be able to make decisions very, very quickly.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:But when that's chronic, then it's almost like that light flickering and scattering all over the place.
Speaker A:And you can't, you find it very hard to focus and to think clearly.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:So basically the takeaway of that is short bursts of stress, short bursts of alertness allows you to access a higher level of functioning.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But too much of that shuts you down.
Speaker A:So the problem, the problem is I was like this, and I know a lot of other people are like this.
Speaker A:And this is how generally people run their lives at the moment they're in a Constant state of reactivity.
Speaker A:What we've got to think about reactivity.
Speaker A:How you reacting to the world.
Speaker A:That is the biggest cause of stress.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Years ago that was seeing a hungry lion and going, damn, I'm going to get eaten.
Speaker A:Stress.
Speaker A:I need to act, I need to react quickly and I need to get out of here.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:That is the fight or flight response these days.
Speaker A:We don't have those types of threats.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:But we still have that same, that same response because we're constantly reacting to different things.
Speaker A:Here's just a few examples of kind of how that would look in daily life.
Speaker A:So constantly checking emails on social media, every time you open an email up, every time you check on social media, you're getting those bursts of cortisol because you're reacting to something in that email.
Speaker A:That email could be something that triggers an emotional response.
Speaker A:Anger, resentment, I don't know, it could be anything.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Same as when you go on social media.
Speaker A:Don't go on social media and don't have any feelings for the social.
Speaker A:The post that you're looking at, it triggers some form of emotional response.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And generally it's not a good response in most cases.
Speaker A:Feeling like you're always kind of behind at work.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So if you're kind of feeling like you're always chasing your tail, then you are constantly in that state of stress.
Speaker A:You're constantly in that state of.
Speaker A:That elevation of alertness.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:You know, struggling to sleep because your brain won't switch off.
Speaker A:So I've just actually done a video on this on social media because I've had a couple of bad nights lately where the little ones kind of been walking up and screaming through the night.
Speaker A:And then I went back to bed and I just can't sleep.
Speaker A:What I actually do is I'm going to touch on what we can, what we can do here.
Speaker A:But I've been using certain practices to actually get myself back to sleep, which I'm going to through in just a second.
Speaker A:But the biggest thing is actually other people's demands.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Now when we go thinking about burnout, those who are at higher risk of burnout are those who deal with people.
Speaker A:So we're talking about like health care workers, teachers, coaches and PTs, those in hospitality and parents.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because we are dealing with other people's problems.
Speaker A:We're dealing with other people's demands, other people on a daily basis.
Speaker A:And this is emotionally exhausting.
Speaker A:You are having to.
Speaker A:When you, when you're dealt with somebody else, you got to imagine every time you're dealing with someone else's problem, then you are actually getting those.
Speaker A:And we're talking about, like talking when you're going to socialize with people, talking about when you're doing this in a work capacity, so you're dealing with kids or you're dealing with patients or clients, you are constantly reacting, okay?
Speaker A:So you're constantly elevating these levels of cortisol.
Speaker A:You're constantly getting these heightened states of alertness which eventually burns you out.
Speaker A:And this is why when we're kind of looking at teachers and especially healthcare providers and the NHS and we need to have better protection for these people because, you know, if we look at NHS staff, majority of NHS staff are burned out.
Speaker A:Look at teachers.
Speaker A:And the teachers are notoriously burnt out because.
Speaker A:And it's not, you know, people say, like, oh, we're teachers, you know, they get 13 weeks off a year and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:But it's like, that doesn't matter because the point is they're dealing with kids for like six hours a day.
Speaker A:And if you're dealing with kids for six hours a day, five days a week, that is emotionally draining and exhausting.
Speaker A:And this leads to burnout.
Speaker A:So the kind of, the takeaway of that is if you're always in reaction mode, like your stress superpower actually works against you.
Speaker A:If you're always reacting to the world, then, you know, it works against you.
Speaker A:A really common example here is, and this, this is a real bugbear of mine.
Speaker A:When people wake up, the first thing they do is they grab their phone.
Speaker A:I'm actually doing this now.
Speaker A:I've got my phone by my side.
Speaker A:The first thing to do is to grab the phone and open up the phone and start looking at social media or emails.
Speaker A:Now if you're doing that, you're exposing yourself to the world.
Speaker A:You're actually making yourself, you're, you're, you're already putting yourself in a place of someone else's demands.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:You're telling that the world's telling you how you should feel and you are actually reacting.
Speaker A:And because you're reacting, then you were just basically, you know, in that heightened state of alertness, and eventually you're just going to burn out.
Speaker A:So what is this?
Speaker A:What is the solution here?
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:So there's solution basically to be able to control the stress response.
Speaker A:That, that is the biggest thing.
Speaker A:The first thing is to look at your habits.
Speaker A:Okay, I'm going to go through some practices, I'm going to give you some tools, but let's look at habits first.
Speaker A:Let's first, look at habits.
Speaker A:What habits are you doing?
Speaker A:Do you wake up on a morning and immediately grab your phone?
Speaker A:Are you immediately putting yourself into somebody else's world before you actually sort your own world out?
Speaker A:That is a reactive habit.
Speaker A:Now, what we want, instead of being reactive and putting having reactive habits on the morning, we want to then be able to have proactive habits.
Speaker A:Okay, so things that actually give us energy instead of taking our energy away.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So imagine yourself as, like, as an iPhone.
Speaker A:Every time you react, that's a little bit more of your energy going down.
Speaker A:That's a little bit more of your battery draining.
Speaker A:So you've got to be able to find ways to restore that energy.
Speaker A:A couple of things that I like to do in the morning, I do some journaling, I like to do some writing.
Speaker A:Writing gives me energy.
Speaker A:I love to write.
Speaker A:It gets me.
Speaker A:Gets my brain flown.
Speaker A:You could go for a walk.
Speaker A:You could do a little bit of exercise.
Speaker A:You could go to the gym.
Speaker A:There's a lot of things that you could do on a morning to replace those reactive habits.
Speaker A:That gives you energy instead of taking your energy away.
Speaker A:And that's probably the best way to look at it.
Speaker A:It's like, is this giving me energy or is this actually taking my energy away?
Speaker A:So let's kind of touch on some tools here.
Speaker A:So if we're talking about, like, acute stress.
Speaker A:All right, this is like when acute stress is that kids, you're trying to get your kids out on the morning, you know, that immediate level of stress, or you're then going to do some public speaking, or you're going to be doing a presentation at work without that instant sort of reaction where you sort of feel anxious and.
Speaker A:Or, you know, just your heart rates elevated and you feel that, you know, adrenaline running through your body.
Speaker A:That is.
Speaker A:That I'm calling.
Speaker A:That's what we call, like, acute stress.
Speaker A:Now, what we can do here, there's a couple of things.
Speaker A:The first one is called the Physiological Sigh.
Speaker A:This is an incredible.
Speaker A:I actually learned this from Andrew Huberman on his podcast.
Speaker A:So actually check his out podcast.
Speaker A:Really good.
Speaker A:He has loads of talks, a lot about neuroscience.
Speaker A:It's really, really incredible.
Speaker A:Podcast.
Speaker A:But the physiological side, this is kind of how it goes.
Speaker A:So what you do is you take two.
Speaker A:Two deep breaths.
Speaker A:We take a deep breath in, followed by a short, deep breath, and then it's a long exhale.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:It's very difficult for me to do this actually on a podcast because you can't see what I'm doing.
Speaker A:But I'll give it A go anyway.
Speaker A:So what you kind of do is you take a deep breath in once, as much as you can, and then a short sharp inhale to actually get as much air in your lungs as possible.
Speaker A:So it's a bit like this, it goes like this.
Speaker A:It goes the first inhale and then I expend all of that air out of my lungs.
Speaker A:And you might need to repeat this sort of once or twice, maybe three times.
Speaker A:But what this does is when you're in that acute stress, when you've got that acute levels of stress, your heart rates up and what you want to be able to do is you want to bring your heart rate back down.
Speaker A:Because when you bring your heart rate back down, that's when you start thinking more clearly.
Speaker A:So let's say you were going to go and do some public speaking.
Speaker A:You might get that initial level of kind of anxiety and you're feeling really kind of stressed about it.
Speaker A:Now if you can bring your heart rate down, when you bring your heart rate down, you lower those levels of cortisol.
Speaker A:You can then use that as fuel to then go into your public speaking and absolutely nearly presentation as opposed to being over alert and messing it up.
Speaker A:Okay, so that's kind of a different way of looking at it.
Speaker A:So try that physiological side the next time you feel in acute stress.
Speaker A:The other thing is a walk or a little bit of exercise.
Speaker A:Again, we want to be able to calm the nervous system.
Speaker A:So what I look to do is just to go out for a walk if I'm.
Speaker A:If I'm feeling nervous for a particular reason.
Speaker A:So for example, I know this sounds really ridiculous, but doing a podcast, I actually feel quite nervous beforehand.
Speaker A:My cortisol levels are quite high.
Speaker A:I feel quite anxious, excitement.
Speaker A:I do feel excited as well because I love doing this but, but I still feel a little bit nervous.
Speaker A:So what I actually do is I try to, I'll have a pace around the house a little bit or actually do some push ups or I'll do some jumping jacks or something like that because that actually helps me to regulate my heart rate.
Speaker A:I know that sounds kind of backwards that you're going to be doing exercise when you know your heart rate's already high.
Speaker A:But we're not talking about like high intensity exercise here, we're just talking about low intensity exercise to get more oxygen into the brain, into the body, into the brain.
Speaker A:So then we can then start to control how we're feeling.
Speaker A:So that is a really great tool that I use.
Speaker A:Now number two is chronic stress management.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:This is when we're feeling all of these stresses that.
Speaker A:So your spike in cortisol has been constant throughout the day.
Speaker A:You've had a really stressful day and you just feel absolutely drained.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Now to get to the end of the day and not feel as drained, we then need to be able to have stress control tools within our day.
Speaker A:All right, so for example, one that I like to do, it's.
Speaker A:It's called yoga nidra or non sleep deep rest.
Speaker A:Very, very similar.
Speaker A:But what they're kind of designed to do is they're designed to put you in a state of restorative relaxation.
Speaker A:Can almost be used as like, so say you've had a bad night's sleep and then you want to catch up on some sleep that particular day because you're feeling wiped out.
Speaker A:Like, that's a good way to restore mental energy, but it's also a good way to reduce that chronic levels of stress and to calm the nervous system down and to feel in a restorative state.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:So you can, you can Google those terms, yoga nidra or non sleep deep rest and think of it as like a reset to your nervous system.
Speaker A:But just to kind of touch on, on that because I did a video on social media now this, because this really adds to stress.
Speaker A:So my young, our youngest Una, she has last few nights has been absolutely just distraught for whatever reason.
Speaker A:And kind of waking up 2:00 in the morning, she's kind of screaming.
Speaker A:So when she's screaming initially, you know, immediately ping, you know, you're alert, cortisols spike because it could be a threat, could be anything, that screaming has alerted you to wake up.
Speaker A:So immediately you go and see how she is.
Speaker A:You could be there sort of five, ten minutes or unfortunately, like my wife last night, she was there for nearly two hours with her.
Speaker A:But basically when I go back to bed, I find it very difficult to get back to sleep.
Speaker A:Once I'm awake, I find it very difficult to sleep because then my brain starts racing around and I start thinking of all the things I haven't done.
Speaker A:And you know, this is, this is a big part of why we don't.
Speaker A:People can't sleep.
Speaker A:You're kind of ruminating.
Speaker A:And this is why we've got to be able to take our mind away from the things that we're thinking about because they actually elevate your cortisol levels.
Speaker A:Okay, so if you're thinking about, oh, you haven't done that email or I'm going to message that person back tomorrow or Oh, I forgot to do this today.
Speaker A:All of these things, it's like you are triggering, you reacting, you are reacting to your thoughts and it keeps you awake at night.
Speaker A:So we've got to be able to take our mind away from that.
Speaker A:So yoga nidra non sleep, deep breast.
Speaker A:I've been doing that over the last couple of nights and it's been absolutely amazing just to kind of get me back to sleep.
Speaker A:Another thing that I do as well actually just while we're here is on a nighttime, I listen to sleep stories.
Speaker A:I actually do two things actually.
Speaker A:Either listen to sleep stories or I've actually got the waking up app, Sam Harris's waking up app.
Speaker A:And he has like little sort of snippets of like different, different topics that he talks about or his guests talk about.
Speaker A:I quite like that because it's, it's quite relaxing the way they talk about it.
Speaker A:And it actually sends me off to sleep and yeah, just a little sort of hack for you there.
Speaker A:And one of the best ways to do this another way, another, another, another tool is to exercise again.
Speaker A:Go for a walk, do some exercise in the house.
Speaker A:But personally I like to go out in nature.
Speaker A:I think no, once you go out in nature that you're connecting yourself to nature and there's some, something magical about being in nature and it just naturally brings your cortisol levels back down and brings you back into that kind of relaxed state.
Speaker A:And this is why I love going for a walk on the morning.
Speaker A:I love taking the kids out.
Speaker A:I'll never take the car because again, like I've said a lot of different things but the purpose that I feel really good and it makes me feel great and it's, there's something about nature that does that and it's proven to lower cortisol.
Speaker A:So it's not about eliminating cortisol, it's about reducing it and actually using it when we need it the most.
Speaker A:Even just having like a walk throughout the day and then maybe like a 5 or a 10 minute yoga nidra that is going to restore your mental energy, reset your nervous system and then you're going to go into the next part of your day feeling energized.
Speaker A:Then you can then use that cortisol again for another challenging task that you've got for that day.
Speaker A:And the third one, this is the king of stress release control even.
Speaker A:Let's not call it release, let's call it control.
Speaker A:The king of stress control.
Speaker A:And this is sleep.
Speaker A:Sleep is the gold standard.
Speaker A:It's king.
Speaker A:Sleep is where the magic happens.
Speaker A:You've listened to my podcast before.
Speaker A:I love sleep.
Speaker A:And I love sleep because it's so magical and exciting in terms of we don't really know what happens in sleep, but we just know it's where all the good stuff happens.
Speaker A:Our body gets stronger, our minds get stronger.
Speaker A:It's where we learn, it's where we reduce stress, it's where we regulate all our emotions and hormones and all of these cool things that we want our body to be able to do happens when we sleep.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:That is just, just so important to remember.
Speaker A:So if you did anything out of everything that gave you today, like even if you were chronically, if your stress levels were chronically elevated throughout the day, there's nothing much you could do about it.
Speaker A:Make sleep your priority.
Speaker A:Like have a really good sleep schedule.
Speaker A:Like get really in with your sleep.
Speaker A:Go to bed at the same time every night.
Speaker A:Have like a wind down routine where you switch in blue lights off an hour, at least an hour before you go to bed.
Speaker A:You may be getting a warm shower or a hot bath, something like that where you can then, you know, basically what that does is it lowers your body temperature.
Speaker A:Sounds kind of backwards, but because you kind of in the heat, it pushes all the blood to the surface, but your core temperature drops and it actually puts you in a deeper sleep.
Speaker A:That's a good one.
Speaker A:You'll have listen to sleep storage, do any all these things to reduce your cortisol levels and have that natural wind down routine.
Speaker A:Because what we've got to think about is the kind of opposite hormone to cortisol.
Speaker A:So we're thinking of alertness is melatonin, which.
Speaker A:Melatonin is the sleep hormone.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So on a morning we actually need cortisol to wake up on the morning.
Speaker A:That's our alertness hormone.
Speaker A:We need to be alert in the morning.
Speaker A:But on nighttime we want to have cortisol at its lowest and we want to stimulate melatonin.
Speaker A:So this is why, you know, when people are sitting in a nighttime and they've got the lights on and bright lights, like the body still thinks it's daytime.
Speaker A:Especially when you're looking at really blue lights and bright lights, then you don't produce melatonin or you certainly don't produce enough melatonin to put you in that state of sleep.
Speaker A:So just kind of think about that, like make sleep your main priority.
Speaker A:So the main takeaway kind of really from that part of it, it's not about removing stress, it's about, you know, you being a master of control and stress.
Speaker A:That's kind of the thing.
Speaker A:So that's, that was kind of the podcast for the day.
Speaker A:I hope that was kind of insightful.
Speaker A:So basically the main takeaway is stress isn't the enemy.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:It's actually your secret weapon.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:Stress isn't handsome.
Speaker A:The problem isn't stress itself, but it's how you actually use it.
Speaker A:If you're, if stress is using you and you can't control stress, yes, that's a problem.
Speaker A:You're gonna be burned out and gonna have all of these negative effects that are associated with stress.
Speaker A:But if you learn to control it instead of letting it control you, then going to have more energy, you're going to have sharper focus, and you're going to have the ability to just handle life a lot better.
Speaker A:Now, whatever that is, whether that's dealing with your kids, whether that's making your business more successful, or work presentations, public speaking, whatever that is, like, use it to your advantage and be more mindful in your daily life.
Speaker A:So when you're looking at tasks, habits, anything that you can do and look at it and think, is this giving me energy or is it taking away my energy?
Speaker A:And then you can decide how you're going to approach that.
Speaker A:If it's a big heavy task, you might say, okay, after I've done this, I'm going to go and do something that gives me energy.
Speaker A:But if it's just mindlessly scrolling on Facebook, emails, getting lost in busyness, then ask, is this better in my life or is it actually making it worse?
Speaker A:So thank you for listening today.
Speaker A:I hope today's episode was insightful and helped you think about stress in a different light and that you can actually use it as your superpower.
Speaker A:But if something kind of resonated, don't keep it to yourself.
Speaker A:Just drop me a message and let me know.
Speaker A:You can send me an email, tell me what your biggest takeaway was, or you can connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn.
Speaker A:You can find these links in the show notes.
Speaker A:And alternatively, what you can do is I have two quizzes that you can actually test yourself and test your energy score and your performance score.
Speaker A:So I have two quizzes.
Speaker A:The first one is for women over 35.
Speaker A:This is to discover your warrior woman energy score.
Speaker A:This will give you a personalized insight about your hormones or energy levels.
Speaker A:It's really insightful and give you a step by step breakdown to what you do to need to get those scores even better.
Speaker A:And I have a female athlete performance accelerator quiz.
Speaker A:This is for athletes aged between 12 and 30.
Speaker A:Obviously I don't think many 12 year olds will be listening to this, but certainly if you are a parent of a young athlete who is competing in sports and this performance score or the sort of this quiz will be insightful to see where your daughter is, where her energy levels are at and what she can do to actually improve her sports performance.
Speaker A:You can find both links in the show notes.
Speaker A:And for you guys, if you're kind of thinking, well what about me?
Speaker A:I'm left out.
Speaker A:I'm so sorry.
Speaker A:I am getting a quiz done for you guys too that will be ready soon.
Speaker A:But for now I only have the one for women and for young athletes.
Speaker A:But that doesn't mean you can't be here because I will have one, I promise.
Speaker A:So just remember that stress isn't the enemy, it's your superpower when it's used in the right way.
Speaker A:So let's go put it to work and I'll see you next time.
