Stress Isn't the Enemy — It's the Message You've Been Ignoring

0:03Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien, a podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

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2:10Darin Olien:Hey, everybody. This is Darren O 'Lean. This is the Super Life Podcast. Do you want more out of your life? Of course you do. Do you want to be content, happy, joyful, going through, going towards your passions, your purpose, contributing to life, having contentment in what you do, being healthy and happy? Well, that's why I'm here. And I'm also excited to launch my Super Life Patreon. So make sure to check that out, superlife.com, because we are going in. No more just hanging out on social media all the time. I'm going to go all in on you on my Super Life platform, and I'm stoked to do that. Today, we're going to talk about stress.

2:54Darin Olien:That's right. We're going to talk about stress. Maybe stress is pointing to a higher vantage point of the acute looking at it. Maybe it's pointing you to something greater that sometimes our little minds, in the grand scheme of things don't grok right away, don't understand, don't fully receive, and I even understand. I know I find it all the time where I know something's occurring or I know I'm impatient and it hasn't happened yet, but in my heart, I keep moving towards sometimes things I can't see yet, but I'm visualizing, I'm feeling it, I'm, I don't want to say manifesting, but I'm really letting it in.

3:39Darin Olien:And stress is an ally because it shows us where we're trying to control. It shows us places in the body that need attention. Hell, it shows us things in our life that needs attention. So maybe stress isn't an enemy. Maybe it's a dashboard light telling you where your life is, maybe where your nervous system is, and also where our culture is. And these things tell us where are we out of alignment? Where are we out of alignment? Where's our body? Where's our point of view? Where's our perspective? The algorithms, media telling us all this other stuff, so we're stressed, stressed, stressed, stressed, stressed.

4:25Darin Olien:Today, we're going to zoom out so that you can to have a better perspective above the noise to reframe stress, trying to get better at reading the signals, asking the right questions, creating a better environment for you to receive and look at maybe things in your life that we all can get kind of pushed into. We feel like we're in a corner sometimes when we're in this no choice kind of universe we find ourselves in. If you find yourself in a no-choice universe, then you are not open and you're cutting yourself off from the infinite of possibilities. Because the infinite of possibilities always, always, always exists.

5:10Darin Olien:Our little minds try to control everything. I know mine does and I work on that constantly. I'm not going to get into a ton of stats on stress because you know it. It shows up in every area of family, business, financial, health, trauma, the past, wanting a better future, stress, stress, the society, all this stuff. And globally, over a third of the adults felt and feel like stress, and they were stressed yesterday, if polled. In the U.S., half, 50%. Imagine a world where half Half of the people are running around stressed. Are they making good choices in their life? Hell no. So a better vantage point of understanding a tool of stress in your life will allow you to then use it as a tool to shift, course correct, solve something, move into possibilities, Open yourself up, releasing things on and on.

6:21Darin Olien:And stress, you know, in our brains, we always try to think of things as a reduced thing. If my partner would only do what I want them to do, I would not be stressed. Well, that's not true. Stress doesn't necessarily come from a thing. What we're really talking about is the chronic stress, the stress that is always there. There were some studies, I read the book, The Healing Code, and they did HRV throughout a large population of people. And the majority of the people who said they weren't stressed showed up on heart rate variability, which is not influenced, 99 % of it is not influenced by any placebo.

7:04Darin Olien:It's like measuring your heart rate variability on your physiology. And the majority, over three quarters, over 75 % of the people, well, the people who said they weren't stressed, 80 % of those people were actually physiologically stressed. So even though statistically we're asking people, are they stressed? Were they stressed yesterday? And only 50%. But my thought and my feeling in some of the studies show that it's a lot worse. It's more. And our modern day world has something to do with that. So we have to look at stress from a layered perspective rather than reduce it down to it's my partner or it's, you know, the children or it's financial or it's my job.

7:53Darin Olien:The truth is it's layered. The truth is it's a lot of it. Now, think of it. If I'm not getting good sleep, it's not good for my health. It's not good for my blood pressure. It's not good for my blood sugar and on and on and on. And if I didn't exercise because I was tired and I didn't sleep, now you're not getting the benefits of exercise and it just keeps going and going. So if you are more and more stressed, you're less and less likely to make good choices, which is why we have to look at this in a layered perspective. Now, hold on here on this episode because I'm going to give a whole bunch of solutions from this perspective on what we can do and how we can look at this.

8:39Darin Olien:And your whole life is going to benefit as a result. So there's zero downside. We also have to look at the layers of the central nervous system itself. So oftentimes we want to calm down, but it's really safety that we're looking for when we feel safe. And keep in mind, unless you're literally under a bombing threat of that type of situation, which unfortunately many people in the world are not, I'm not speaking to that. I'm speaking to everyone listening right now. If you have a house, you have food, you have family, then you're just dealing with, you're not looking for calm necessarily. You're looking for the solid state of safety.

9:23Darin Olien:This then really treats the physiological vagal response and the parasympathetic response much, much better than trying to quote unquote be calm. The other layer here to stress is your inner dialogue, your inner narrative. Now, if you have trauma from the past and spoiler alert, we all do. So if you are someone who loves to spiritually bypass everything and didn't do any work and so it doesn't bother me, guess what? 90 % of your life is run by your unconsciousness. You're running around going, that doesn't bother me. That's conscious. I'm sorry to say you don't know shit of what your unconsciousness is doing unless you look at it.

10:12Darin Olien:If you look at it, you can look around your life and go, what is expressing itself in my unconsciousness? What patterns is showing up? And this is where I have meaning to certain things. I have beliefs around certain things. I have identified to illnesses, pain, suffering, hurt, shame, anger, fear, pointing, pointing, pointing at everyone else. If you find yourself doing that, we all do it. When you find yourself doing that, that is the indicator of it's coming from within you. And there's some unresolved issues and trauma. And by the way, I have a link here at a great podcast with the trauma expert, Dr.

11:00Darin Olien:Amy Abagin. And I put the link in the show notes on superlife.com. Incredible book, incredible insight into trauma, into releasing trauma. There's a lot of techniques, but regurgitating story is not the way. Just letting you know that. Your inner narrative, going back to safety, is trying to protect you from a past trauma. If that is the dialogue that's negative. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't have enough money. I'm overweight. My spouse doesn't like me. you know, whatever it is. If you find yourself creating that story and repeating that story, that's on you now. That's inhibiting you from a super life.

11:45Darin Olien:The other layer of stress is your social field, your community. If you're looking around and those people, maybe you are. If you're listening to this, you're wanting a life. You're wanting a super life. You're wanting more out of life. You're listening because you're listening for cues to help you navigate this incredible world that we get to be a part of. But it also comes with a lot of stuff. But that's the game. That's the opportunity. Our whole point, from my humble perspective, is we're just trying to find our way home to the kingdom inside of ourselves. Our heart, our love, our joy. Not out of bypassing the pain, the shame, the anger, the sadness, the trauma, whatever has happened to you.

12:37Darin Olien:If you were birthed, no matter how perfect it went, you have trauma. You've now entered the world outside of your mother that is filled full of things that can kill you. That is gnarly. I didn't have a good birth and I'm still jumping into that and releasing all of that stuff because it has tentacles connecting many things in my life. I spent a lot of time on that. Your social field, your relationships, who are around you? Are they inspiring you? Are they giving you the currency of lifting you? Or are you creating debt? Are they pulling you down? If that's the case, reorient yourself with be honest with them find new friends and relationships stand tall in yourself show up for yourself because that's the only way you cannot get to contentment and happiness without stress if you don't find literally the peace and stillness and love within yourself period full stop build your social field be radically honest not to be mean but be truthful you have other warriors that are around you going i want more out of life and then your friend says i do too this is an amazing life what else is possible how does it get any better than this let's go but if you find your social circle babbling about this politician that politician this government always doing wrong for you, it's going to affect you.

14:19Darin Olien:It's causing you more and more stress. By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Over 500 toothpaste tubes have been thrown away since I've started this ad. You don't think of these small little things, but they add up a lot over time, and we can do something about it. That ends up to be over a billion plastic toothpaste tubes a year alone that ultimately end up in our environment and in our waterways and ultimately ends up in the ocean. Do you want to add to this or do you want to do something different? Plus, maybe that exposure to that plastic, getting the plasticizers and the endocrine disruptors and then putting that toothpaste in your mouth also is not a good idea.

15:09Darin Olien:There's some great solutions. You can DIY stuff. I've got many of these in my fatal conveniences. But the easy ones that I use every day and I'm about to travel a lot more and the traveling makes them really easy, I go to bite. I bite down on a little tablet, which is not interacting with any plastics because it's in a glass bottle. And it's refillable and reusable and sustainable. And there's no unwanted toxic fluorides, flow agents, and solvents in my mouth. So my favorite is this Bite Toothpaste. 100 % home, compostable pouches, subscription models. You don't even have to think about it again.

15:55Darin Olien:You're helping you by putting clean products in your mouth, and you're helping the environment because Bite Toothpaste is one of the best companies I've seen looking at all aspects of their supply chain and their refillable, reusable, sustainable, regenerative practices. So Bite is offering you, all my listeners, 20 % off your first order. Go to trybite.com, T-R-Y-B-I-T-E forward slash Darren20 or just use the promo code Darren20, D-A-R-I-N, and you can get 20 % off your first order with a great new toothpaste without using the tube. Hey, listen, we all fall into it. It's all over social. It's all over media.

16:40Darin Olien:It has been telling you that vision the entire time. You need to stand up for your own vision and have some boundaries around this stuff. Or else this is it. It's as good as your life's going to be. I don't know about you, but through COVID and through all of this crazy stuff we've been going through, I'm like, I don't need to watch media anymore. From the mere fact of, I know what I can contribute to. I want to contribute to you and building your super life. I want healthy, powerful, strong people, healthy, powerful, happy, joyful, solution-based, sovereign people moving forward and towards your life.

17:26Darin Olien:Your purpose might be to raise your children. Yes. Then be honest with that. Your purpose may be to, at this point, heal, I'm putting my hand up, a back injury. But that back injury for me has led to some of the greatest healing in my life. But it doesn't come without some serious work. I've shed tears. I've been on my back in severe pain. Going into it, your purpose can be micro-purpose to get you on the next tier from the Maslow hierarchy of needs. If you are bodies hurting, if you're all of this stuff, you can do tons of work inside. Forgiveness, joy, happiness, letting go of trauma. Build your field.

18:16Darin Olien:Build the plasma around you and the people and the support of nature. Shut down notifications unless they're of importance in your life, your children, that kind of thing. Shut down on headlines. Don't be manipulated by algorithms anymore. Another layer of stress is your literal environment. The light, natural light, the air, clean air, cutting down on excess noise, cleaning up your space, clutter. Your home has a nervous system that you take on. If it is jumbled, then it's going to affect your stress and your own nervous system. There's also existential layers. If you, again, I'm not saying you need to change the world, purpose and values and being of service to something that matters to you outside of you, if not acknowledged or moved upon, you are then causing yourself stress because you are self-absorbed.

19:23Darin Olien:Stress of these layers equal load to the point where you have less and less resiliency. So one little comment, one little something pulling in, someone pulling in front of you, you blow up because you have layers of stress of non-integrative care for yourself. You can lower this load, raise your capacity for brilliance and possibilities. You can redesign your life one choice at a time. Create a new system. So when stress comes up, when the dashboard light flashes, don't smash the bulb. Look under the hood at the reason for the light flashing. What is it telling you? What is it showing you? What wants to be acknowledged that you've been unwilling to acknowledge?

20:17Darin Olien:People, if you start to understand stress, it's a freaking amazing tool to release things that are not yours, probably never was yours, but you took on. So lean into them. I talked about calm is a state. Safety is the signal. Your body relaxes when it detects safety. Yes, it does matter who's around you. If you don't feel safe with a partner or whatever, then, and I'm talking physical, emotional, mental, but there's a level of safety you need to provide yourself. but if you have a physical situation where you're not safe, get safety. Find safety. But you can breathe. You can look at your face.

21:08Darin Olien:You can hear your own voice, your tone, your posture, the light that's around you, the connection that you build with the creator that has created all things literally is inside of you. Now you're talking religious. I'm not religious. I'm not getting into all of that stuff, but I believe in that higher power. I believe in God. I believe in that force because I have touched it inside of myself. This power of life and nature and the light and love that we are is the most powerful thing in this universe. So practice acknowledging acknowledging who you are. Because the modern world is taking every ounce of time and energy from you.

22:00Darin Olien:It's trying to harvest all of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions in time every second of every day. If you don't take a time out to reorient yourself in this modern world, it's probably it. It's probably as good as it's going to get. You may accomplish things, but you won't find happiness and contentment and joy. So if your body, and your body is an amazing feeling system, frequency, magnetics, oscillation, in concert with the people around you, the field, the animals, the nature, we are conductive. So ask your thing, what would make you feel safer in the next 30 seconds? What would make you feel more content in the next 30 seconds?

22:54Darin Olien:What would help you generate the kind of life and purpose that would fill your day full of positivity? Take those moments. Ask those questions. Take a deep breath in now. Keep your eyes open if you're driving. Take one more. Do you feel how quickly you can change your state? You can change your state of being right now with an inhale and a slow exhale. All of our choices are within us and upon us already. So if I'm safe, if you say to yourself, I am safe enough right now to take one more soft breath and one more action towards something I care about. What would that be like? I also want to think of trauma in this instance.

23:47Darin Olien:I talked about that amazing episode with Dr. Amy Abagin. I have another episode coming out as well. And we are just these flesh beings running through this world. But we are so much more understanding inside of ourselves that if we're willing to tap into it, many things could change. What if trauma was the origin of the protector? What if trauma wasn't negative? Yes, it's gnarly at that time, but what if that trauma was the absolute, you were here today, so you made it. What if that trauma in that time was the protector you needed at that time and was not a problem? The situation may have been challenging and gnarly and horrific, whatever it was.

24:37Darin Olien:So that may have been an issue, but what you did with the trauma was not the problem. But unpacking it to release it now that you no longer are in that situation, you want to release it from your endocrine system, your central nervous system, your endocannabinoid system. All of those things know how to release. Amazing book called Peter Levine, called Waking the Tiger. I read it 25 plus years ago. wild animals in if they survive a chase in the wild as soon as they find a safe place going back to safety again they shake all they literally go back into shaking that central nervous system out of their system because if they carried the trauma of being chased they would freeze and get killed the very next time it would happen they know to release it you know best to release your trauma so check out my podcast dr amy abigan and we've got more podcasts coming around trauma and the best way to do it the fascial system which is incredibly powerful some questions you could ask around trauma trauma what are you trying to protect me from now how long have i carried this what do you need from me today a breath a boundary a repair your body often wants to finish the survival response.

26:06Darin Olien:Like I said, Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger. It wants to shake it out. Doesn't want to hold it. It wants to sigh. It wants to cry. It might even want to scream. It may want to stretch your body and open your chest and open your heart. Go into breathing, acknowledging the peace that's in you to release the stress that's around you or in you. Big life goals are easier when your system feels like it has the space and is safe. Imagine that. So stress is an interesting thing because it's a weird multiplier. There's one lever that quietly multiplies the risk across many systems of the body. This is wild and fascinating but makes sense.

26:55Darin Olien:When you're stressed, your immune system goes down, your heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, mood changes, advanced aging, weight retention, and even your success and career is going to be massively impacted on the level of stress and trauma that you're holding. So we want to get honest about our stress, our trauma, and there's many ways, science-backed ways, that you can calm down. So there's a bunch of research in the show notes around immune defense drops by the New England Journal of Medicine. There's a dose response. Viral load increases with stress. Chronic stress and this layered approach, all of these multiple things adding up.

27:43Darin Olien:You didn't sleep. You didn't work out. You're fighting with your spouse. All of these things. You didn't acknowledge some trauma. Layer, layer, layer. This is chronic. The body then becomes less responsive to its own anti-inflammatory signaling, keeping inflammation stuck in and on your body. It's an incredible study. So stress slows repair. It slows the repair of even, And there was a great study on Lancet that showed that stress slows the healing of skin wounds. So think of everyday recovery. If you're stressed and you're chronic stress, everything slows down. The amygdala gets turned on as an active through stress.

28:31Darin Olien:And this then shuts down your ability to work towards a future that you care about. It increases cardiovascular events, turns on bone marrow activation more, and increases arterial inflammation. So what happens, chronic stress increases strains of your heart. How wild is that? Again, this is published in The Lancet. Cellular aging goes up. Telomere shortening. So it's not a single cause. I want you to view stresses differently. It's not a single situation other than, yes, a single situation can cause absolute acute stress, obviously. Car accident is an acute stress. But what I'm talking about is this chronic stress.

29:23Darin Olien:All of these layered approaches that I talked about, This is cutting across in a risk amplifier that worsens almost any chronic issue and undermines healing. Calming the stress in this multi-layered approach boosts nearly every other health intervention. So one of my points, integrative life, looking at all of these other stressors, changing your environments to support anti-stress is going to help everything in your life. Here's some things that you can do. Here's some layers that you can absolutely. Circadian rhythm. Obviously, Andrew Huberman talks about this a lot. Probably the one thing he talks about more than anything else.

30:13Darin Olien:Light in the morning. That sun goes up, get your sunglasses off, get early morning light, and gosh, if you can go for a walk and do that, get in nature. Less stress, less stress. Calm the noise. If you're in a city, put earplugs in, unless you're on a street, or you know what I'm saying. Calm everything down, or put in music that is calming. Clean up the clutter. Clean up relationships. Friction engineering. so support your your system gratitude journaling in the morning breath routine in for four out for eight in for four out for eight do that for five minutes so you also want to look at and hit from another angle what are you investing in invest in your peace it's nature conscious breath movement you enjoy, create, create something, be of service, look up in the sky and see the stars, be in awe of the incredible blue planet that we are on, eat clean food, sleep well, and align your work the best that you can.

31:27Darin Olien:Maybe it's not your current job or align some work to something that's meaningful to you. Some of the losses and that drain your energy is unresolved conflict, low-grade clutter, low-grade noise, ultra-processed food, scrolling for hours, over-commitment, bad boundaries, misalignment of tasks, doing stuff that don't matters to you, late caffeine, alcohol of any kind, fluorescent lights at night, put your blue-blocking glasses on at night. All of these things are layers of stress. Some of the things that I like to do, because what moves me more than anything, is the things that matter that I'm connected to that I at least can feel that I'm contributing to a greater life, which is why Super Life Patreon and that platform is so powerful for me.

32:19Darin Olien:Because I'm connected to things that I will share with you in the years to come that I know are happening today that are so powerful. But today I get to deliver something off of social media to people for a price of a latte per month. I get to deliver to you things that I care about that will help you in your life. That's an example. I can't just live a regular job. I can't. I never have. It's not in my DNA. So I ask myself, and you could do this in the morning or at night, what matters to you today? What can I let go of that I've been holding on to? What conversation can I have to eliminate this conflict?

33:04Darin Olien:Who can I be? What can I create? What can I contribute to? That service is extremely powerful. So some things that you can, in the tool kit that you can use is obviously slow breathing. Even if it's two breaths in, in the nose, two breath inhale. hell you do that three times you've just shifted that's it improves your hrv improves the oxygen saturation proves changes the physiological state move your body a little bit if you're stressed just go walk around get out move tell squat in place jump up and down do some stretching move that body move that energy and there's a lot of mindfulness as you're walking take your shoes off Walk.

33:51Darin Olien:You're forced for mindfulness because you don't want to step on a rock. Like I said, get your ass in nature as much as possible. A sauna is a great de-stressor. Sleep, of course. Go to bed earlier. Get up earlier. Get seven to nine hours of sleep. Write, write, write what you're grateful for. Start your day every day. These things are powerful. These things will change that layered stress in your life. if you're willing to do them. I have a lot of this in the show notes. I have a lot more exercises. If you want to really jump in to your super life with this and so much more, please sign up for my new super life Patreon.