Never Stop Building
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Never Stop Building
117. Relieving Stress And Identifying Anxiety
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What's up everybody, welcome back. I'm your host, sam Kaufman, always grateful and joyful to be talking to you on this podcast. I say it every week and I'll continue saying it. I love it. I love this podcast. I appreciate all of you who listen and review and share and subscribe and DM me and tell me what you like about it, ask me questions. When you guys engage with me actively, it helps me so much With planning on what I'm going to talk about. That would actually help you. I could talk all day long, as anyone who knows me closely knows, but I want to talk about the things that I have experience in. That would bring value to your life and business. So if you have anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. Always welcomed, always appreciated, always me responding, and always will be.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about stress a little bit on this episode and I'll give you some context backstory before I get into why I think the phrase I operate better when my back's against the wall, meaning when most people say that what they mean is I do better when I'm stressed. I get more done when I'm stressed. I want to talk a little bit about that before I go down that road and why I don't say that anymore and why I stopped. I'm going to talk about how I used to be and not even used to. Used to is not even really fair, I would say like how I used to be all the time and how I've learned to mitigate that stress response. Now I have always been a very stressed and anxious person. A very stressed and anxious person. I did not know that about myself because I never learned how to identify feelings. So when I got sober, that's when I learned how to identify feelings and I learned in the recovery process, when I worked through the steps to learn about myself, I learned that what I was dealing with more often than not was anxiety rooted in the fear of something.
Speaker 1:Now I come off as very extroverted and I am primarily extroverted, though I have some very strong introverted tendencies. I don't think anybody's. I mean some people are, but I don't think most people are fully one or the other. I don't think anybody's. I mean some people are, but I don't think most people are fully one or the other. But a lot of my extraversion in my life has come from and really used as a mask to mask some sort of anxiety. So as a kid I was like class clown. I was always good at like talking, negotiating, speaking, manipulating my way out of things. I mean, you don't successfully use drugs as an addict for years and years if you don't become very good at negotiating and manipulating your way through life. And so when I got sober, what I learned about myself was those were all tendencies rooted in a mask of the anxiety that I started feeling as a kid but didn't know how to identify, didn't know how to cope with, didn't know how to mitigate, had no help with.
Speaker 1:I now recognize there's a lot of anxiety in my family, my parents, and there's a lot of anxiety rooted behaviors that, again, were never identified, discussed, communicated. You know, no one taught me what it was that I was feeling and why it was that I was doing what I was doing and I'm not just talking about, like drug use, like, even as a kid, the class clown stuff and the always, like you know, having to have friends around, all this stuff to like compensate for what was really truly deep down, like a scared. Um, I was always just scared. I was scared. I was scared of people's opinions of me. I was, I was just scared of of things, and I typically didn't even know that or recognize that that's what was happening. But I learned that this mask was present.
Speaker 1:So, as I learned about myself that I dealt with a lot of anxiety and I learned that anxiety looks different for everybody, the core similar attribute what anxiety is again is rooted in fear. That is true for everyone. Anxiety is rooted in fear. What isn't true for everyone is how it looks. Typically, when we talk about anxiety, we think about panic attacks, we think about nervousness, we think about shaky people. We don't often, if ever, think about stronger, more extroverted, charismatic, confident people who also deal with anxiety.
Speaker 1:And here's why Anxiety is a stress response. Stress is a biological response. Chemically in the body, cortisol and adrenaline go up, usually one or the other. But cortisol or adrenaline go up. It is a stress response, up, it is a stress response. Anxiety is the physical manifestation of a chemical response in the body. Everybody has anxiety. Everybody deals with some form of stress response in some situation or another. I didn't know that either, and now I do.
Speaker 1:And as I learned more and more about myself, you know, I went from an anxious person who was never really stressed to a stressed out person and the stress came on a little later, in my 20s, I had already been sober for a little while but I had my business, two kids relationship, I had money to manage, I had bills to pay, I had people to lead, manage, hire, fire, hard conversations, et cetera, et cetera. I had some relationships, friends to manage. Stress came on for me later in life as a new manifestation of my anxiety. I was the guy who said, oh, I just operate better with my backs up against the wall because I'm a doer, I like to get things done, I like to feel accomplished, I like to visually see that I've done certain things through the day or the week or whatever. That's one way I've learned to affirm myself and my own productivity.
Speaker 1:And I picked up stress as a habit. I picked up stress as the stress response, the stress response and, for me, increased heart rate, short temper, irritability, short responses, and I would work my butt off hard, hard and I would work and I would work and I would get things done and shuffle around. And I'm not going to lie to you and say that it did nothing for me, because I got a lot done in that stress response and when I wasn't stressed I didn't know how to get a lot done. When I was calm, I didn't know how to be productive and efficient and in a state of I'll call it homeostasis, which is like a baseline, where your body's at homeostasis. You're at a baseline, you're in a normal range of things. That's really the feeling of calmness when everything's okay.
Speaker 1:This is when most entrepreneurs and high performers get really uncomfortable the feeling of calmness, the feeling of there's nothing to do right now, there's no fire to put out right now, there's no problem to solve, there's no hard conversation to have, there's no fight, there's no fight, there's no problem to solve, there's no hard conversation to have, there's no fight, there's no fight, there's nothing to fight, there's nothing to run from. And most high performers get very uncomfortable in that place because we don't know how to affirm our own value if we aren't solving a problem. And I've said this for years and I don't say it anymore in this context, but I used to joke and say man, I love solving problems so much, I'll create some just to be able to solve them. And I don't say that anymore because I don't do that anymore. I still love solving problems, but I'm sure as hell not creating them anymore, because life throws enough problems your way that you don't ever have to create another one again in order to be able to solve an unlimited amount of problems for yourself and for others.
Speaker 1:So I found myself a stressed person. I used to believe work stressed me out, or my wife stressed me out, or my small children stressed me out, or my client stressed me out, or my employee stressed me out, and I would assign stress to external circumstances and people, and I don't know if this was in prayer or in step work or in meditation or in journaling, because I've been doing all of these things for 10 plus years, over 10 years, like the version of me that you talk to and listen to today. This is like I'm just a very ordinary, if not less than ordinary, man who has worked his ass off to try to do something or some things extraordinary. 10 plus years of working on myself and an infinitely long time to go. And it was sometime in this work that I realized that none of these I believe I was driving and nothing was wrong and I was stressed and I kind of had this like. This is where this process for me started. I had this almost aha moment of like holy shit, it's not anything that makes me stressed. I am just a stressed man. I am a stressed person.
Speaker 1:I don't thrive in being stressed. I keep myself so high, strong and so stressed that when I'm not, I can't function because I'm almost constantly having to recover from being in that high cortisol, high adrenaline state. Now, remember I told you this is a biological chemical response in the body that is not good for the body long-term. Cortisol, for instance. Cortisol rises when you wake up in the morning. The entire purpose of that is to wake you up in the morning and then it falls for the rest of the day. It's not supposed to stay high all day long. One of the main reasons I don't mess with my phone in the morning I do not get on social. I mean, I barely get on social media now as it is. But like I do not get on social media, I do not mess with my phone. I do not check my email within the first 30 minutes of waking up Most days. Most days is because that biological response is already happening. Cortisol is already high. We're already in a stress response, naturally to wake ourselves up.
Speaker 1:That's why I start with water, my supplements, food or exercise most days, both before I mess with anything external that could, by proxy, increase cortisol or adrenaline inside of me without my permission. Sometimes you get, receive, see external information and it just stresses you out. I catch myself all the time reading something or getting something and feeling the stress response, and then I'll just close it and go back to it later because I don't want the stress response right now. I want to focus on what it is I'm focusing on, and it was when I realized I am a stressed person. I have been in this biologically stressed out state for so long that I now have to recover from this. It's not that I function better when my back's against the wall, it's that I now have to recover from this. It's not that I function better when my back's against the wall, it's that I don't know how to function. Not against the wall, I put myself against the wall.
Speaker 1:And so some of the things that I did to mitigate stress first and foremost, I will say that sleep, exercise and dietary choices are the single biggest drivers for me, period, I think for anybody. If we're eating ultra-processed food, if we're not eating on a regular schedule, if we're not on a protein-rich diet that satiates us, if we're not drinking sufficient water and we're dehydrated, we are naturally naturally going to be producing more stress hormones. We're naturally going to be in that state more than we need or want to be Sleep. Sleep is an obvious low-hanging fruit that most stressed out people can't do anything about. Hey look, it took me years to get my sleep under control. It was not the first thing I fixed. I will give you this as the key pointer that really changed everything for me from a rest, recovery and sleep perspective. I stopped obsessing about my morning routine and I started obsessing about my nighttime routine.
Speaker 1:I wind down. I do not eat within three hours of going to sleep. I wind down within three hours, two hours of going to sleep. There's no phone, there's no activity. And I go upstairs and I get myself ready for bed 60 to 90 minutes prior to wanting to be asleep and I tell myself we're winding down now, there's no more work to do, there's no more problems to solve. You're okay, everything's okay, we're resting now and I literally affirm myself into rest mode.
Speaker 1:I don't need any help in the morning getting my ass like ready to go. I wake up like and I'm not a morning person. I don't wake up like yay, it's the morning, I'm so happy. I'm very grumpy for at least 30 to 45 minutes. I am not a morning person, though. I get up early, I do my thing, but I don't need any help.
Speaker 1:Wanting to attack my day Again, cortisol is already high the minute I get out of bed. I just want to get going. I want to get moving. I don't have a three-hour morning routine. I like to get up, get my water in, get my supplements in. If I'm training, I eat real quick and I go to the gym. I train, I go right to work from training. That's my morning routine. That's how I like it. I like it quick, efficient and right. Attacking the day my nighttime routine is what changed everything for me from a resting and recovering and sleeping perspective. Obviously, food Things like if you are a vapor or heavy nicotine use that's going to make it difficult to sleep, calm down and get to that baseline homeostasis point.
Speaker 1:If you're drinking energy drinks, you're already fucked Stop. I really can't stress enough that energy drinks do not solve any problems for you. If you need some caffeine boosting, great, have some black coffee. Have some natural caffeine, black coffee. I drink black coffee one, two cups max per day. Have some black coffee. Quitting energy drinks is one of the best things I ever did. I probably have. I might have eight energy drinks a year and that's probably a lot. It's probably like four. I have like one per quarterly event. When we throw a win rate quarterly event by day two, I'm typically dragging, I am exhausted conversations. I'll typically throw one in the mix just to get a boost. That's important.
Speaker 1:Micronutrients taking the proper vitamins I can't give you suggestions on this, but my stress vitamins include proper magnesium. I'm not a doctor, I'm, this is just my. This is what I do. Um, I take a lot of magnesium. Magnesium is a huge, calming, huge, like helpful supplement vitamin, the right vitamin B. Um, I take a calm supplement that's a combination of vitamin B's, magnesiums and other things. It's called revive calm. I've been taking that for years. Very helpful. Ashwagandha is very helpful. Rodelia Rosalia or Rodea Rosalia or whatever it's called, also helpful. The specifics on this are not important. What is really is get some blood work done and find out where you're deficient and I would supplement that. To start with, vitamin D is very important. Sun is very important. With Vitamin D is very important, sun is very important.
Speaker 1:Prayer humongously, humongously beneficial. Behind the obvious diet, exercise water stuff. Prayer has been the biggest game changer in my entire life. I can't tell you what to believe or why to believe or when to believe or any of those things, but I will tell you right now that my faith and my ability to stay calm, trusting, focused go hand in hand. There is clear cut, real life evidence in my life of that. That's been huge Prayer and trust and just and honestly. Part of what's so beneficial is I pray out loud and what I've learned about myself is I have to talk things out loud, whether I'm praying or recording a voice note or sometimes recording a podcast. Reason this is one of my favorite pieces of content to make, or my favorite. It's very therapeutic for me to say and speak what's happening in my mind and my heart out into the universe. It releases from me and I don't have to deal with it anymore. That's been huge for me.
Speaker 1:Having a couple solid relationships, other men that I can lean on, massively, massively impactful. You know there's only a few, but they are wildly important and impactful in my life. They are wildly important and impactful in my life. And then just other things like having boundaries, having a schedule, sticking to it, setting boundaries to the best of my ability, keeping those boundaries. These are some of the basics that have made a massive difference in my ability to mitigate stress. I don't not get stressed, I get stressed. I lose my temper, I get irritable, I get grumpy, I get tired. Life shows up, problems show up, things scare me, but my ability to mitigate, my response to those things today is I mean, you wouldn't even believe me if you met me five years ago, let alone maybe even three years ago, two years ago. I mean, I get better every year, but I wanted to talk about this.
Speaker 1:I had the opportunity to speak at an event last week and I had a really nice time there and I connected with some people who I love connecting with and developed a new relationship or two. But I met so many. I forgot how stressed out some people are. You know, I forgot how stressed out some people are and I saw a lot of stressed out people at the event, stressed about their business, stressed about their life, stressed about their money, and I heard that man, I just I do so much better when my back's against the wall, like I thrive in chaos, and it really it stuck with me the past couple of days since I've been home and I really want to just get this out Like I don't think that you do thrive in chaos. I just don't think you know any other way. And I'm not going to say there's not some benefit to like.
Speaker 1:I kind of get that too, man, like when sometimes in those moments when there's a little chaos and I have to fight and I got it, like yeah, like I'm effective, I am effective, I'm an effective person in chaos situations. But I used to only be effective in chaos situations and I couldn't perform at all. I was either high stress doing everything, or I was lazy, bump on a log doing nothing and I had no in-between and therefore I had no consistency or sustainability in my life. Today I have consistent action every day over long periods of time and the results long-term from the consistent effectiveness versus short-term, chaotic productivity are 100x. So my encouragement to you is start practicing whatever you need to practice to mitigate your stress, reduce that anxiety and start seeing how well you can actually function in a calm flow state, because it really, really makes a massive difference. Talk to you guys next week.
