HSOL 208: ACT HAPPY WEEK, DAY 5: STILLNESS

Published: Fri, 03/25/22

Edition 208: ACT HAPPY WEEK, DAY 5: STILLNESS

MARCH 2022

The focus of Act Happy Week is to educate the public about purposeful actions you can take to create chemical shifts in your body that drive Positive Emotions. Here is today’s offer (485 words of content, Reading time ~1.9 minutes):

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I. DAY 5: STILLNESS

rainbow in the blue sky with trees act happy week day 5 stillness

Photo credit: Jim Smith, from our front porch 2021

Let's talk about Stress

Do Rainbows make you smile? Me, too. But first, imagine the above arc represents the Inverted U of Stress. Across the bottom is stress level, the left side represents productivity.

Stress is positive in periodic doses – a project deadline kicks up your productivity; new demands drive creative bursts; passion for a job keeps you engaged; hunger gets you into the kitchen to cook. As you move up the stress curve (left to right), productivity and motivation increase UNTIL… you hit your maximum stress capacity.

From there additional stress becomes DIStress. Productivity, creativity, and engagement decrease. Stress held too long affects your emotional resiliency (burnout) and your physical wellbeing. Stress is a healthcare issue, too!

The good news: Did you know that 100% of stress is self-created? Everything that happens in the world is neutral; nothing “out there” creates your stress. It’s the STORY you tell yourself about it that generates a stress/fear response. You make a mistake (neutral fact) and you wallow in regret or self-criticism long after the event occurs. Or you fret, worry, or freeze up over some future event that’s not yet real and/or you cannot control.

Most stress occurs when you “time travel” like that – living in the past or future in your head, telling yourself a disaster story that is either history or fiction.

How Mindfulness Reduces Stress

Mindfulness | mīndfəlnəs | noun | a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations.

Mindfulness includes any practice in which you focus on NOW and noticing, without judgment, what is (vs. what was or what might be). Meditation is the rock star of mindfulness, but there are many more-accessible forms, e.g., walking in nature, watching children at play, doing yoga, cooking, or eating a meal slowly and with full attention.

The simplest form of mindfulness is something you’re already doing, all the time: Breathing. Let’s demonstrate.

I invite you to follow your next two breaths in and out. If it helps, look at that lovely rainbow as you breathe. [I’ll wait…]

What happened in those few seconds? If you are like most humans, you took a deeper breath than in the moment before you paid attention, on purpose. And in that moment of paying attention to your breath, where were your thoughts? On your breathing, right? Which is only happening Now. You briefly stopped time traveling.

And while you were paying attention to only Now, just your Breath, what happened to your stress? You set it down for a minute. You gave your system a break and let a tiny bit of your stress go.

Repeat daily. Your stress won’t disappear, but you may find it easier to carry. Enjoy.

Remember to keep dancing with whatever shows up in your life and say “thank you” to The Universe at least once a day.

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II. The Executive Happiness Coach®

If you ever feel like you could use some support for getting where you're going, give me a shout. Same applies if someone walks into your office and says, "hey, do you know a good coach?"

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Jim Smith, PCC, is The Executive Happiness Coach®, a global player in the space of Executive Presence, Vitality, Team Coaching, Keynote speaking, and mentor coaching.

For more tips on Leadership, Coaching, and Happiness, visit JimSmith.Coach and download my report on "The Ten Terrible Habits That Undermine Leadership...and what to do about them before time runs out."
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