How To Go From Sad & Stressed to Free & Happy By Acing Your Health (Or Career) Goals
Because stress = self-sabotage + anxiety + poor performance
Do you feel tired when you wake up in the morning, like you haven’t slept at all?
Is your mind always churning and do you find it difficult to relax?
Are you always on edge and feel like you need to keep eating to power through the day?
Are you constantly worrying, feeling hopeless (even though you’re quite optimistic on your good days) and just feel like life is a little bit out of control?
These are all classic symptoms of stress, the bad kind which causes us mental and physical health problems.
Commonly, we can see stress as weight gain, stubborn belly fat (yes, that’s where stress gets stored!) and a whole load of stuffing ourselves with food to feel better (especially at the end of the day).
Not only are we stressed about our work and relationships, we also stress over our apparent inability to get healthier (despite making New Year’s resolutions each year!).
All the stress adds up and we often default to eating food to make ourselves feel better.
Food like cookies, chips and chocolate gives us the energy bump we need to push ourselves, makes us feel a little bit happier and improves our mood on a dull day.
Unfortunately though, this is a vicious cycle.
We get stressed, eat to feel better and then get stressed about overeating and indulging our cravings which makes us all the more anxious and stressed. Phew!
On top, we get stressed about getting stressed, which doesn’t really help matters.
Five Steps To Stop Chronic Stress (& lose weight)
There is a way to break out of this cycle and find freedom and happiness.
Follow this five-step method and you’ll get there in the next 5 minutes of reading this article!
STEP #1 — Accept that you are stressed
Many of us actively ignore the fact that we are stressed, as if somehow blocking it out will make it magically go away.
Some of us don’t even realize we are stressed, maybe it’s been this way for so long that feeling tired, having cravings and not being able to sleep properly is our new ‘normal’ — and we are too worn out to try and change this status-quo.
For others, we think that distracting ourselves from the stress will help us forget and hence feel better.
Whichever camp you may fall into, we can all accept that stress catches up with us and we end up breaking down and wishing there was a way to stop it all.
Instead of taking this long and hard journey to acceptance, we can fix stress more easily by acknowledging that it is very much present in our lives. Then, we can be open to finding better ways to deal with it before it gets too hard.
STEP #2 — Identify the cause of the stress
Seems simple, doesn’t it? After all, the most common answer to “How was your week?” is, “Oh, it was stressful you know — the usual”.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t help us pinpoint the actual stressor in the equation.
Instead,
Be ultra-specific about why you are stressed.
For example, if you want to improve your health:
- “I am stressed that I can’t lose weight” is not specific enough.
- “I am stressed that I can’t stop myself from eating an entire pack of cookies at night” is ultra-specific.
If you are stressed about work:
- “Work stresses me out” is not specific enough.
- “Whenever I have a meeting with my boss, I feel stressed because he is so judgmental” is ultra-specific.
The more specific we can get to identifying our cause of stress, the easier it is to solve it.
STEP #3 — Check if the stressor is valid
Stress test (no pun intended 😂) the validity of the cause that you identified in the previous step.
Ask yourself, “Will I feel any better if I can resolve this cause of stress?” There is only one right answer — HELL YES!
Not just a ‘yes’ and definitely not a ‘maybe’. If the answer is not a ‘hell yes’, go back to step #2 again to dig deeper and find a stressor that elicits a ‘hell yes’.
For example, if you are stressed about all the compulsive eating you do at night, will you feel a HELL of a lot better if you can eat a cookie and easily stop yourself from reaching for another one?
Great, once you’ve gotten to the ‘hell yes’ , we can move to dealing with the stress in a healthy way!
STEP #4 — Understand what a ‘win’ looks like
Now that we know the true cause of our stress is, we need to map out what our ‘win’ looks like, i.e., what we want to achieve.
What needs to happen for us not to feel stressed?
Put another way,
- What needs to happen for us to feel happy and relieved instead of sad and anxious?
- What needs to happen for us to feel in control (like we’ve dealt with the situation well) instead of feeling like life is unraveling?
- What needs to happen for us to feel energized instead of deprived?
Map out in your head how the ideal situation would play out.
For example, in case of the cookie-eating scenario, you’d think something like:
“I would walk back from work tired and walk into the kitchen. I’d pick one cookie out of the pack and treat myself for having done a good job at work. Then I’d simply start preparing a healthy dinner without a thought of the cookies crossing my mind. Today, I desperately steal glances at the Oreos and try to control myself,but tomorrow I won’t even feel the need to eat another one.”
When you think of your ideal situation, your ‘win’, how do you feel?
Does this make you happy? Does this make you WANT it right now? Do you feel desperate for it to be real? Do you feel like a total boss when you imagine yourself achieving it?
Congratulations! You’ve found your win!
STEP #5 — Map out the process of getting to your ‘win’
Now that we know what the ultra-specific cause of our stress is and what our ‘win’ looks like, we can map out the steps in getting ourselves out of dread and to our dream scenario.
One way to do this is by identifying triggers or moments that get us stressed and finding a way to eliminate or deal with them more effectively.
For example, in the case of stress or compulsive eating, we may find that:
- Today, we drive past a cafe that always has donuts in the window display, which first triggers our desire for a treat. Tomorrow, we can then take a different route home to avoid this.
- Today, we know that when we get home, we always reach out for the chips in the cupboard. Tomorrow, we can dump the chips in the bin (and not buy any the next time) which will then force us to look for other food options.
- Today, we always come home starving and grab the first thing available to eat. Tomorrow, we could either pack a snack to work (so we are not that hungry when we get home) or we could have some yogurt and fruit ready in the fridge to snack on as soon as we are back.
This way, we have an exact plan on what to do to avoid the stress eating.
We are not just hoping and praying that we will have willpower or that today will somehow be different than all the other days. The plan makes it foolproof. And that’s what finally helps us get our ‘win’.
P.S.: if you are interested for a done for you step-by-step process to beat stress eating and cravings, here are some free resources.
Why does this process work when all previous attempts at beating stress haven’t?
- Likely you were never specific about what exactly was getting you stressed. Following the “hell yes” approach almost guarantees that what you pick here is the true stressor.
- Likely you were also just trying to avoid the stressor or wishing it went away without exactly knowing what success you wanted instead. The “I want this right now” test helps us identify what will actually move the needle towards happiness.
The goal is not to just stop being stressed but to actually find the freedom and happiness we imagine having in a stress-free world.
As long as we limit ourselves to just avoiding the negative, we stay stuck in a limbo.
Instead, we need to step away from our stress-fueled brains, think about what excites us about the future and then go out and get it!
