Consuelo There is a universal truth, a scientific phenomena to hold on to: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Think about how it applies to what we have been talking about today. The more self-compassion we give ourselves, the less stress we put on ourselves. The more stress we endure, the less resources we have for protection on our bodies. The more of a good thing, the less of a bad one. The more of a bad thing, the less of a good one.
Intro
{music begins}
Hola Chicas,
I’m Consuelo Crosby born with both sides of my brain fighting for attention, structural engineer and creative, mother and mentor, center of any spontaneous Fiesta, if I’ve had my morning latte. I give it all to being a first-generation Peruvian bad-ass Chica.
So grateful you’re here today, wanting to shed that armor, relax into your truth, pick up your salsa step, tune out what’s getting to you and be lifted from goddesses of generations past that taught us to live life large and out loud. Cause we’re not blending in…
Life Lnxx knowledge you didn’t even know you had to be the bad-ass Chica you were born to be. {music ends}
Hola Chicas
Grateful you are here with me this week and embracing this autumn weather that is slipping over us. This will be a cozy cast to add some softness to your month and give yourself a pass on adding any pressures.
We’re going to take a look at stress; what’s the source of it in your life, and how to take some of the pressure off with some real simple changes that should become your good, daily habits. Just two things that will give you the best opportunity to keep stress at bay and avoid the damaging consequences of it going on unchecked.
I made it past last week, not even mentioning that I dropped my 13th episode on October 13th. I’m way too superstitious to have brought that up before getting the episode out. I think it’s the Peruvian in me. I refrain from calling out the Fates and having them suddenly bust out of their boredom by causing me trouble. I love numbers, so 13 on the 13th that’s one to remember.
Here in San Francisco, the weather fluctuates so badly this time of year, that one day it’s 80 degrees and you’re relaxing on the bay and literally the next day, it’s 50 and raining. It’s head spinning and you can put away any of your clothes because you don’t know what’s going to happen on any given day, let alone week. So any of you coming to visit, you have to bring suitcase loads of clothes.
I’m definitely not a seasons lady. No warm blankets and cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes. I would love to be in a tropical oceanside warmth every day, sunshine and turquoise waters. No change in the seasons. These are my healing elixirs. Throw in some soft sand and Palm trees and I’m done! Instantaneous relaxation and happiness.
The Great Resignation
So let’s create a moment for some downtime, take a moment to inhale deeply and just settle into ourselves today. There’s been a lot of demand placed on you over the past 18 months. And even now there’s still a lot of unknowns. People are reevaluating where they are in life and how they got here. The Great Resignation is on and people have stepped back and taken perspective on what they really want in life, everything from their careers to how they’re treated on any given day. It’s really important. Not only is this a healthy accountability for any individual, it may begin an overall readjustment to the system; the system that’s been pushing us to our extreme.
This is what we’re going to talk about today; the pressures we’re under from all sides and the damage to our body caused by that associated stress, whether it’s work or child-rearing with lack of childcare support, a pending return of commuting in the new year. or finding time to just stop and feel supported, to take time off. And, in the middle of all this, the biggest pressure and demands come from… Who do you think? Ourselves! Yep! We tend to be our own worst critics and add too much stress on top of the pile.
But I said this was going to be a cozy cast so we’re not just going to talk about stress. I want to pass on some knowledge that illuminates how our brains can trigger the greatest stress, so you know where it comes from, and what we can do about it to both stop it and give our bodies a healthy boost to protect ourselves.
You are a valuable person to the planet. You were born with purpose that contributes to the whole, and we need you healthy and happy and confident knowing that you’re exactly as you were meant to be.
Life is full of unknowns and your life journey is to learn about them, experience them, see how they affect you. Your journey is not to face these unknowns as if you’re supposed to know the answer already, and feel defeated if you’re wrong. So let’s settle into a moment of resignation ourselves and take a self-assessment of stress levels and what can be done to lower them.
Let’s take a look at what we can do for ourselves to protect us from the ailments of stress in our daily lives. These next steps can be implemented right away. So that you have a healthy outlook and you can plan the life that you were born to live.
Use Self-Compassion Instead of Self-Criticism
First of all, let’s talk about the easiest one to access our way of thinking and why we are so hard on ourselves. Now you may not think this is true relative to yourself, and hopefully that is totally on point. Still, take a moment and consider the stress you’re under. What makes you anxious and has you worrying at night? It may be about wanting a promotion or financial pressures, self-image or loneliness.
I feel you. Life can be really challenging and the struggle is real when you are operating from your soul. It can leave you vulnerable and that can be scary. There are so many human conditions that pile on us as we move through life. Life experiences that may be well planned or happen unexpectedly and since life is organic, we can’t control the outcome. Sometimes, things go awry and stress kicks in. And in these moments, we tend to be even harder on ourselves. What may start as a small hiccup turns to a bigger problem because of the added stress of blaming ourselves for the outcome.
This is like super nachos when you just keep piling on more and more to what started as a basic tortilla chip. Yummy as it sounds, when it comes to stress, yeah, no, don’t go for the super nacho stress mode. Instead, avoid acting on self-criticism that breaks down your self-confidence and self-love, which in turn will break down your body, ladies.
So, why do we tend to be hard on ourselves when an outcome beyond our control affects us in a way we weren’t anticipating? Because there are so many millenniums of existence pulsing in you, so many life links that certain behaviors are ingrained in your DNA from the beginning. There’s nothing you can do about it, but understand where it comes from and how it affects you. These behaviors started as survival skills, long time ago, but they’re morphed into behaviors that aren’t necessarily needed anymore for survival. If anything, they may be working against you for a healthy and happy life.
I was listening to psychologist, Kristin Neff, on KQED radio’s ‘Hidden Brain’. That’s a great show that totally feeds my geekiness. Kristin Neff is a professor at the University of Texas Austin. Oof, I have another hilarious story there. I’m gonna have to put these stories all in a different podcast. She frames a fascinating understanding of where the tendency of self-criticism developed and how we can stem it, even stop it, and instead act on self-compassion. You know, that’s got to feel better.
This behavior of self-criticism was started really early on in human world as a way to secure knowledge that certain actions we either healthy or harmful and it’s associated with a fight or flight response for survival. Now this makes total sense. Like if you’re up against the saber tooth tiger and you don’t know it’s not friendly and you got too near it and it took a swipe at you, your brain would go, okay, stop that. Don’t do that ever again. What are you thinking? Don’t go near that saber tooth tiger.
Yeah. It would take that kind of training on your brain to make sure that you didn’t do it again and get killed. But, that severe training, that’s what we have to deal with on a daily basis ’cause it’s still pulsing in us. These days, the fight or flight behaviors have morphed under our intellect and instead of survival, these behaviors now assess our ego, ego associated with self-worth.
Rather than having our brain interpret the experience as a life lesson, a survival lesson, now we have a tendency to interpret the experience as self-judgment. Kristen states that when we fail or we make a mistake that our egos get hurt. And yeah, we have felt the deflation of not having the right answer or being rejected in a hopeful situation.
But the fuel on the fire is that we have collectively humanly evolved to associate our ego with our physical presence. Instead of thinking, ‘I made a mistake, I’ll try to correct it next time. We have morphed into thinking, ‘I made a mistake, therefore, I’m not good enough.
Ouch!! Wow. Right. Why are we doing that to ourselves?
See how we can subtly make that unhealthy move from a mental understanding of what happened, and what to do next time, to a mental assessment of who we are.
For instance, let’s say you had a presentation and it didn’t go as well as you hoped. So, your ego got hurt; like, oh, I messed up. In your brain, as it was initially made in human world, it would have said, ‘Okay, that presentation wasn’t strong enough. Next time I’m going to add more data and make it clearer, and it will be better. It’s not a survival thing, it’s just a learning lesson thing.
Now, we’ve gone to the belief that this lesson, which hurts our ego, defines who we are. So now you say I did a bad presentation, therefore I’m not good enough for this job and I should quit or I don’t belong here. Ah, I know this is the tendency. See that stress you’re putting on yourself? The difference is so slight, yet it’s so destructive. And the beauty is that we have full control to change how we respond to life’s issues..
Before we give ourselves another task to learn and practice, even if it’s to make our lives so much healthier and happier, let’s put this behavior in perspective. Let’s take yourself out of the example and put one of your friends in place your friend’s lamenting on her presentation because she didn’t think it was good enough, she didn’t have enough data, and she felt bad about it. At that moment, would you tell her that since she had this incomplete presentation and that she felt bad about it, that she wasn’t good at her job? I doubt it. We tend to be much kinder and compassionate to others and not to ourselves. This creates more stress on us that shouldn’t be there to begin with. We have put that on ourselves.
So the next time you start talking down on yourself, stop and think if you would say the same thing to a friend. Become friends with yourself again. Reframe the conversation in your head to talk encouragement and consolation to yourself so that you begin to realize the unwanted outcome is not associated with your actual person, but rather with the experience. You’re not tied to the outcome or defined by the outcome; Instead you learn from it.
Decide on whether or not you want the same outcome or a different one. Then decide what actions you should take to reach that outcome. In this way, you’re putting your wants first, rather than your past results. You keep looking forward, you keep yourself in a learning mode, so that results are associated with actions rather than your person. You’re operating in a mode of self-compassion and on a learning path.
I think I heard this stress falling to the floor right now. At least your shoulders have relaxed. Are you starting to sink into that cozy sofa?
Self-compassion we can instantaneously start in this moment, start training ourselves on. Instead of being hard on ourselves for every little thing that’s not necessary for our survival, we start being kinder to ourselves; give ourselves a break. See it as a learning moment and look forward to the next time when we can have a different outcome.
Fortify Your Body with Vitamin B’s
Secondly, now that we’ve disrupted our self criticism and reduced some stress immediately, let’s talk about why it’s so important.
Stress goes way back to early humans and the fight or flight response. Stress “was”, and I emphasize “was”, a necessary component for survival. That load of cortisol, the stress hormone that signals an adrenaline rush, that saved a woman from a Saber Tooth tiger one day and kept her DNA on the planet. Some version of her is pulsing and some of us here today.
Today, we still have perilous scenarios that cause a fight or flight response, but they should be once in a lifetime, maybe once every 50 years. Depending on our daily behavior though, we may think every situation is a do or die one and so there’s a constant cortisol load streaming in us.
Some people feel amped with it and productive, but that chronic load of cortisol is detrimental to your physical body. It wears down the natural resources that our bodies have in store to handle the stress and it leaves us vulnerable to the body breaking down. Breakdown occurs in the immune system, the system that fends off all the toxins and attacks on your body and it breaks down the digestive system, making it difficult to digest food and get the energy needed for a full day.
So what are those natural resources that we need to protect our bodies from the onslaught of this stress? Vitamin B’s, ladies, and there’s a whole bunch of them there’s a whole bunch of them. B 1, 2 3 B five, B six, B nine. This is sounding a lot like bingo. And most importantly, B12 that’s associated with a healthy and happy mood.
Now this isn’t medical advice. This is life knowledge handed down from generation to generation.Lessons learned through stories and advice before science figured out the why’s and the how’s. Stories that taught us what we should eat in order for X, Y, and Z to happen, or why we need to be in the sun or how much rest is really necessary, or why eating an apple a day is really a thing.
In my case, my mother used homeopathic remedies first to see if my maladies would respond to natural treatments. She learned them from her mother who lived on a ranch, far from medical access. This was true for most people living in the early 1900’s and even today in rural parts of the world.
My mom would tell me what I should eat the night before a sports match in order to have a lot of energy or what to do if I couldn’t sleep at night. What to use to clear my skin or add highlights to my hair. She would make concoctions of barley tea for an upset stomach or indigestion that would make the house reek for days.
So those vitamin B’s are invaluable because your body uses them extensively for everything. You can study more of this on your own, but I want you to know how essential these vitamins are so when you’re under a lot of stress, you understand that it’s depleting your natural resources. Stress breaks down your natural supply of vitamin B’s so you have to make sure you replenish them either through foods or supplements. Because these are water-soluble vitamins , your body flushes them out every day and you have to keep reloading them.
I’m going to give you a quick rundown on what these are just so you have a mild understanding so those first few, the B 1, 2, 3, they tend to be lumped together and they’re more known as thiamin and riboflavin and niacin. These are the ones that really protect our nervous system, especially when under stress.
And they also give you a really healthy digestion so that your body can break down the food and make it into energy. If your nervous system isn’t functioning properly, then really there’s a lot of stuff that comes up and can go wrong, like anxiety and sleep deprivation.
How do you get that in food? You have a super burrito, beans and rice and cheese and avocado. That’s all the good stuff. Or maybe yogurt and granola or an egg salad sandwich. All good for boosting these one through three is to keep you calm because your nervous system is functioning and able to get through the day with enthusiasm because you have all this energy.
Now B five and six are a tad more obscure, but still necessary so we’re going to give them some time. Those are really necessary for healthy skin and hair. There are so many products on the market that claim to improve the look of skin and hair but maybe improvement comes from within. Foods of dark, leafy greens and whole grains may give you glowing skin that stress tends to mess with.
Then there’s the B9 and it’s called folic acid, and this is imperative for brain function. So important, so much so that they prescribed supplements when you’re pregnant because it’s vital to the fetus for healthy brain development. This, too, is in the dark, leafy greens and dried beans but also in organ meats. Did you just squeal at the idea of organ meats? Hahaha… you either love it or hate it, but I can’t pass up liver and onions! It’s delicious, all in the name of having a sharp mind.
Rounding out the B’s is B12, the mood booster, the source that peps you up to view the world more positively, the natural resource breaks down with age. So it’s really important not to become a grumpy old person by making sure you get enough B12. Get your fill of salmon or dairy. No worries if you are dairy intolerant. Many of the alternative products are fortified with the B vitamins.
So when under a lot of stress, these are the vitamins that get depleted from your nervous system, using them up to combat it. Drinking too much alcohol depletes your B’s and so does just getting older. Not having enough B’s in your system could actually be adding to your stress because your body isn’t able to handle things as well.
Not having enough B’s can have your body breaking down and causing problems that add more stress because you’re worried about them or they cause you pain. It can become a vicious cycle of stressing, therefore diminishing your natural source of B’s to help fight it, which leads to poor digestion and mood, which leads to inability to sleep and have energy, which leads to an inability to absorb more B’s and that leads to more stress.
Oh my goodness, let’s take care of this now, before it becomes too big a thing and there’s too much damage done. Now, the fun part of taking care of it is getting it from your food sources because basically everything on a brunch menu is loaded with vitamin B’s. There’s eggs, potatoes, milk, cheese and meat.
Okay. Too heavy for you. Not in that mode. Well, B’s are also loaded in grains for those cold oats, those pancakes, or the infamous AVO toast, both the AVO and the toast are loaded with vitamin B’s’. But if you’re still not able to get enough through food, then definitely ask your doctor about supplements, especially since you don’t have to go buy all those individually, they come as a B-complex. Really powerful, really important, totally natural water soluble leaves your body. You need it.
Think about it, correcting your stress and ensuring your intake of vitamin B’s can lead to better sleep, better energy, healthy skin and hair, enthusiasm and happiness, good appetite and digestion. Woof! All the things. The healthier all of these parts of our body are, the happier we become and the less stress we feel. Having good energy and sleep alone puts us in a great mood and that helps us deal with the things that would typically stress us out.
So if you’re reassessing where you are in life, considering how you want to live your life and making some changes, then a good start is to eliminate the stress that you have immediate control over. Start today by thinking about what is putting you under stress at this moment, and see how much of it is you yourself.
For Every Action, There is an Equal and Opposite Reaction
There is a universal truth, a scientific phenomena, to hold to: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is a powerful fact that extends beyond the rules of physics and into our intimate lives. Think about how it applies to what we have been talking about today. The more self-compassion we give ourselves, the less stress we put on ourselves. The more stress we endure, the less resources we have for protection. The more of a good thing, the less of a bad one. The more of a bad thing, the less of a good one.
Make a promise to be kind to yourself. Practice self-compassion rather than self criticism. Train your brain to see life as a learning lesson that adds to your knowledge and continually moves you forward. Remember to protect your body with good sources of vitamin B’s. This is going to get you to that lower stress, fully balanced life, where you are empowered to make decisions for the life you want to live.
Okay. How cozy are you feeling now? Ready to fly to France and eat croissants all in the name of relieving stress?
I would really appreciate your feedback on the podcast to help me improve and learn from you. Please leave a review on Apple podcast through the app. We also added a Podchaser link on our website, at the lnxx dot com, on the sidebar. Podchaser is a site where listeners can leave a review for this podcast and support other listeners joining in.
Share it with your friends and let’s start soothing the population so that we can live a healthier, happier life across all generations. Remember the decisions you make for yourself affect three generations at a time.So let’s be the game changers.
Step into your truth. Ladies. Ciao.
Outro
{music begins}
Really appreciate the time we take to rate and review the podcast, get the backstory and what you’ve heard here today, and reach out to us at lifelnxx.com. That’s L N double X, because it’s about time. It’s about us. Stay in the groove on our social media at LifeLnxx and get ready to make your move, Ladies,
Viva!
{music ends}
