Most stress management strategies rely on you taking time out of your day. You know that meditation and exercise are great tools, but there is often a disconnect mentally with interrupting your work to make time for these tools.

How can you change your state from overwhelm to calm courage that requires no interruptions or equipment?

Choose your words and the questions you ask yourself. It's that simple.

#1 Am I reacting or creating?

Have you ever noticed that these two polar opposite words share identical letters? The way you experience your days will also be profoundly different whether you choose to react to the events of your life or whether you choose to create them.

The bigger question is, what can you create with the circumstances presented to you that you have zero control over?

Life happens, it has its own agenda, but you have two choices in any situation. Reacting often puts you in a powerless position; you are putting out fires and constantly feeling on the back foot.

Despite the challenge, you can choose to create a better reality. Maybe you can't change the external circumstances, but you can always create an empowering meaning for it.

Let's say someone is late to meet you or completely let you down. You can react in anger and resentment because you made up a story that they don't respect you. Or you can create a new meaning that they must have been caught up in traffic, or perhaps an emergency came up? The way you navigate the situation will change your state and your decision making.

Covid has shown us that when people chose the route of creation, they found new opportunities that would never have existed before the pandemic. We have all heard amazing stories of new businesses being created and people discovering new talents that became their new vocation.

The next time challenge arises – will you choose to react or create?

2# What words do you attach to your experiences?

“The word you attach to your experience becomes your experience” – Tony Robbins.

Imagine someone told you that you made a mistake; how would you feel?

Now compare that reaction if someone called you incompetent or useless?

The words incompetent and useless will shift your physiology immediately – you will breathe more shallow, clench your fists, your heart rate will go up, and you may tense your jaw. All this tension is generated from a tiny adjustment to one simple word. Tony Robbins, the author of Awaken The Giant Within, explains it this way:

"We form habitual favourites: moulds that shape and transform our life experience. Unfortunately, most of us have not consciously evaluated the impact of the words we've grown accustomed to using. The problem occurs when we start consistently pouring any form of negative sensation into the word-mould of "furious" or "depressed" or "humiliated" or "insecure." And this word may not accurately reflect the experience. The moment we place this mould around our experience, the label we put on it becomes our experience. What was "a bit challenging" becomes "devastating."

Consider your mental chatter, the narrator of your day. It doesn't stop and gives you a play by play breakdown of your entire day. What words are you repeating to yourself, and what experience are you creating due to these choices?

Self-awareness is the first step to mastering your state. If you find yourself catastrophizing everything with words like survival, nightmare and stressful, then find new empowering words to replace them.

Here are some ideas from Tony to transform your vocabulary:

You are probably thinking, 'What difference does it make to play with words?". Robbins says that if all you do is change the word, then the experience does not change. But if using the word causes you to break your own habitual emotional patterns, then everything changes.

Effectively using Transformational Vocabulary—a vocabulary that transforms our emotional experience—breaks unresourceful patterns, makes us smile, produces totally different feelings, changes our states, and allows us to ask more intelligent questions."

3# Do you use language to describe your reality or create your reality?

“Victims use language to describe their reality. Owners use language to create their reality” – Steve Chandler

Do you know someone who is the quintessential martyr/victim? They always describe life as something that happens to them; it's never their fault, or there is always someone or something to blame? Coach Steve Chandler describes these people as victims because they never seem to take responsibility for their choices.

An owner, however, has a creation mindset and will speak their future into existence. They won't see failure as a dead-end but a detour. It's feedback and a lesson on how not to do something. The most effective way to shift from a victim to an owner mindset is the questions you ask yourself – consider the questions below:

A closed question such as why does this always happen to me keeps you feeling stuck, helpless and stressed because it suggests there is no other alternative. The question makes the situation feel permanent, which catapults you into overwhelm.

When you use a more empowering question, you will tap into the resources to create a better answer and see the possibilities available to you.

Final thoughts.

The next time you find yourself stressed, overwhelmed, angry, frustrated or anxious, take a moment and ask yourself what thought created the feeling?

Then go deeper and unpack the language you used in that thought.

Are you reacting or creating?
What language are you attaching to your experience?
Are you describing your reality or creating your reality?

In the beautiful words of Lao Tzu:

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

Here's to creating your world,

Warm wishes

Lori