How To Have More Peace & Less Stress In Your Life

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you're out there and you want to get some more coaching from me, from my team, and also improve your life more, see what we got. Go to mindsetmentor.com. There's some information on that page so you can learn what else we do besides just the podcast. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. Today, I'm going to talk about how to have more peace in your life, how to stop being so stressed, how to stop suffering so much. and this episode I really, really love and I really want to dive into because for a long time in my life, life was good, but there was just this underlying tone of something being wrong, of me being stressed, of me being agitated.

0:54And this is something I've really gotten hardcore on in my life over the past few years, which is prioritizing my peace. And I think so many people don't prioritize their peace. And I think that we suffer too much and it's so unnecessary when you look at it. And I want you to understand there's really only two states that we can be in at one point in time in a human. So as a human, we can either be in a beautiful state or we can be in a state of suffering. And so everything at any point in time in life, we're at varying degrees of one of these. So you might not be in a crazy, blissful state, but you're in a calm, peaceful state.

1:33That's a pretty beautiful state. You might not be in a full anxiety attack, but you could be like underlying stress. That could be a suffering state. And so when you look at like a beautiful state, for instance, what does this look like? This is happiness. This is love. This is peace. This is calm. This is gratitude. This is compassion. It's excitement. It's the feeling of just like a weight off your shoulders. We all know those feelings, right? Of what it feels like to be in a beautiful state. It's this underlying tone of peace, of things are okay right now. I'm happy with where life is. I'm happy.

2:09There's not really a whole lot to worry about. And if there is something to worry about, it's not right now. It could be coming up in the future. It's just this feeling of, I remember working with a coach years ago and he's like, what do you want more of? And I was like, I don't know the word. I just want more. That's what I want more of. Like the feeling when you take a deep breath and you release and your shoulders go down and your eyebrows kind of chill out and they're not so scrunched up and everything. You know, you're comfortable in the world. You're comfortable in your own skin. You're more at ease.

2:39And because of this, people are more comfortable around you. Your children are more comfortable around you and they don't feel like they have to be on edge. Your spouse is more comfortable around you. They don't feel like they have to be on edge. Your employees, your coworkers, your subordinates, whatever it is that you have that are around you at work are like, just being in this person's presence is calming. You all know somebody who has this presence that's calming, right? It's calm to be in your presence when you're like that. And you put people around you at ease. You don't stress them out.

3:12That's what it feels like when you're there. And because of your presence, it affects everyone you come in contact with. You can act like your energy inside of your body doesn't affect everybody else, but you know and I know it does. A beautiful state is not, and this is really the key part of the whole situation, right? A beautiful state is not about the situation of what's going on in your life. It's not about the circumstances in your life. It's not about being exactly where you want and life is exactly what I want it to be because it never will be. More than anything else, it's like the situation and circumstances are what they are, but I feel at ease and at peace and calm no matter what the circumstances are.

3:56You're the calm in the eye of the storm versus being in the storm itself. And it's more about what you think about and what you feel about with the circumstance in your life. I remember one time where this kind of really hit home and this is a kind of a weird, weird example. But I remember I was traveling like seven years ago and I was flying back into Austin. I came from Florida and it was all warm. and my plane flight was late. And then we got delayed on the tarmac. And then it was another delay and another delay and all kinds of canceled flights and all this stuff kept happening, right? And I finally get home to Austin and I was in Florida where it was warm and it was sunny because it's the sunshine state.

4:38And I came to Austin and just like shit kept happening, right? And I came to Austin and it was cold, like 35 degrees and it was rainy and it was like crappy out. and I remember the doors opened after I got my bags and it was just like blowing in. And immediately the thought in my head was like, fuck, right? Like it was just like the day had kept going. And I was like, okay, this isn't that bad, you drama queen, right? And I was like, what's beautiful about this moment? And I asked myself the question, what's beautiful about this moment? What beauty can't I find in this? And I started listing things off and thinking of things.

5:15Well, you know, it's at least my plane landed and I'm safe and I get to come home and I get to go to my house and I get to be in my place of peace. I started thinking about all these things. And I was like, I'm listening to music and I'm going to put on a song that I love. And I remember taking myself from like the stressed out feeling based off the entire day and all this stuff that's happening to, hey, it doesn't matter what happened. It doesn't matter what today has been. It doesn't matter what the weather is out like outside. I'm going to be at peace. I'm going to find beauty in this moment, no matter what.

5:46That's what I mean by the circumstances and everything that's happening around you shouldn't affect your internal state. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to master the internal state regardless of what's going on externally. So that's a beautiful state. On the other side is the suffering state, which I found myself in a lot when I was younger. This is stress. This is anxiety. This is worry. This is fear. This is anger. It's sadness. It's boredom. whatever it is that comes up for you. It's basically this underlying tone of something is not right and I am not at ease. And so your nervous system might feel on guard, waiting for an attack, constantly trying to protect you in some sort of way.

6:31Something's not right, so I need to be on edge. I was this way for a long, long time. Things were good in my life, but for some reason I just wasn't at ease. And I remember I was listening to a podcast episode there's a guy that's interviewing a psychologist and he was like hey is it possible for people this is a podcaster asked this to the psychologist he's like is it possible for people to be addicted to stress and the psychologist was like yes and as the question was asked i was like oh my god i think i might be addicted to stress based off of you know what i the way i viewed my childhood things that happened to me going to school all of these things putting myself my first business was stressful all of that i was like oh my god have i become like addicted to the feeling of stress.

7:12I was the type of person who couldn't even chill on vacation. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. I've been there and I know what it feels like. And I know that you being uneasy, me being uneasy, makes other people around us uneasy as well. We can't act like how we feel internally doesn't affect other people externally outside of us. And one of the most important decisions that you'll ever make in your entire life is the decision of what state you're going to be in at any moment and realizing that you are the one in control of it. It has nothing to do with what's happening outside of you.

7:52It is a decision of, I'm going to be in a beautiful state no matter what. Now, mind you, you can make this decision. It does not mean that you're going to be there forever. Like, don't sit there and think, I'm going to be in a beautiful state and then get pissed off whenever you get out of a beautiful state, right? You're a human. You'll be having a great day. You wake up, you get to watch the sunrise. You have a great day with your dog, your kids, you're having your coffee. It's amazing. You're in a beautiful state and then something will happen and you'll react to that something and you'll immediately go into a state of suffering and you'll lose yourself.

8:26You'll lose this beautiful state that you were in until you become aware of like, oh, hold on. I feel like crap. Why do I feel like crap? Oh, it's because of this thing. And this is how I'm reacting to it. It's not about never going into the state of suffering because you will probably never get to the point of never getting there. It's about recognizing when you go into that state of suffering and recognizing this is the key part, recognizing that you put yourself in that state. Nobody else put you there. It wasn't the outside circumstance. It wasn't the guy who cut you off on the way to work, right?

9:02It was you that put yourself, it was your reaction to the circumstance, not the circumstance itself. And then taking the necessary action to get yourself back into a beautiful state. Oh, I've lost myself. I'm not in a beautiful state. I want to be in a beautiful state. What do I need to do? And I'll give you an example of how to get yourself back in a beautiful state at the end of the episode. So like an example, let's say, let's say you have a lot going on at work right now. it's a lot. And you have this deadline, this really important deadline that's approaching next week. And you don't know if you're going to make the deadline.

9:36So all day long, you're at your office, you're at your desk, and you're worrying. You're stressed. You're anxious about this deadline. You're still taking the action that you need to, but you're taking the action with this energy of just absolute stress. This is super common, right? You've done this before. I've done this before many times. But then you realize that the deadline is next week. And in the moment, you can take yourself out. And in this moment, you can ask yourself, what is wrong? Are you okay? Are you safe right now? Is everything okay in this very moment? Yes, I get it. You have a deadline that's coming.

10:13But right now, are you okay? Yeah, you're okay. Okay. So you're stressing out right now in this beautiful moment or what could be a beautiful moment over possibly not being done in the future. You're not even not done in the future. You might get everything done. And then you realize the entire week you stressed out, you put your body through so much unnecessary stress and guess what? You got it done anyways. And so what can you do when you notice, oh my God, I'm stressing out. I'm in this, I'm stressing out over this thing that's in the future, even though right now it's a beautiful moment. First, you got to bring yourself to the present moment.

10:45How do you get yourself to the present moment you have to realize that your mind is almost always somewhere else. Your mind is almost always in the future or it is almost always in the past. It's very rarely ever here in this moment. There is one thing that is always in this moment. Do you know what it is? It's your body. Your body is always here. So if you want to bring yourself out of your mind, out of this stress, out of the future, out of the worry, all of those things, you need to get yourself back into your body because your body is here. And how do you do that? Breathing techniques. Breathing techniques you could do, you know, four seconds in, eight seconds out and do that for five minutes.

11:22It will definitely bring you back in your body. You can do 60 breaths over a minute if you want to. And you get yourself back into your body. You calm yourself down a little bit. You make a list of all of the things that need to be done by the deadline. You prioritize them. Okay, this is the most important thing that has to be done first. Number one, this is number two. This is number three. Okay, we've got number one, number two, number three. I need to take action number one. And I need to take action coming from a place of ease instead of stress and worry and anxiety. Either way, the deadline will eventually be here.

11:53And if we're being real, you'll probably get it done. You'll probably get it all done. So you could get it all done feeling stressed and feeling anxious and feeling worried and just this feeling of like white knuckling your way through life with your cortisol and your adrenaline running through your veins, stressed out when you get home from work. And because you're so stressed out from work, maybe you have a short fuse and you blow up on your children or your wife and you're now making them anxious being around you. And now they're feeling stressed because of your stress and your anxiety of being around you.

12:26And now you're not just affecting yourself, but you're also affecting them as well. And now you just realize it's all out of control. You could be that way if you want to. or you could see that the reason why you're stressed out is because you're seeing all of the stuff that you have to do but you realize as a human you can only do one thing at a time and like the phrase how do you need a you know there's a phrase how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time it's the exact same thing you could only take this action and get this each each part of the project done one thing at a time so you get yourself into a calm state you do some breathing.

13:03You prioritize number one, number two, number three. You find the most important thing that you do and you just take action number one. Wouldn't you agree that you take better action when you're calm and when you're centered and when you're focused instead of a stressed out little kid that's mentally throwing a temper tantrum? Yeah, you take better action. It's actually scientifically proven that you take better action when you're in a calm state. You make better decisions when you're in a calm state versus a stressed out state. When you're stressed, when you're anxious, when your body is in fight or flight, your body stops sending blood flow, as much blood flow, to your prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is your executive functioning, your decision-making part of the brain.

13:41So if you're stressed, you're actually making shittier decisions than if you're calm. And so, yeah, you should definitely get yourself into a calm state. So that's an example of work. Let's say, let's make an easy one. Traffic, right? You leave early. You're good. You hit a lot of traffic on the way. Oh my God, you're going to be late. You're going to be late to work. Oh my God. You're sitting there and you're thinking about what other people are going to think of you when you show up late and you look like an idiot walking in late to a meeting and how your boss is going to be like, what an idiot.

14:13You could think that way. Or you realize that you can't move traffic. Like for me, it is ingrained in me. I hate being late. My mom always wanted to be early. My mom, all of the, and this is a true story, all of the clocks in my house when I was a kid were always different times. They were always between like five and 15 minutes ahead. So I never knew what time it was. I didn't have a, I didn't have a, you know, a watch back then. I didn't have a iPhone when I was a kid. I just knew that the clocks were all different times. And so I would look at the clock that had them, you know, gave me the most time.

14:48It was like 15 minutes ahead, I guess. And I'd be like, I got to leave at this one. And I just got to make sure I'm on time. And then I would show up to things at like five, 10 minutes early. So now I have this deep ingrained thing in me. I fucking hate being late. And I just, it's just, it deeply ingrained in me. And so I used to get so stressed out in traffic because I was like, Oh my God, I hate being late. I hate being late. I hate being late. But then I just got to the point where I was like, I can't move traffic. I can't do anything about it. I'm just going to take a few deep breaths. I'm going to put my favorite song on because I'm going to arrive at the destination either way at the exact same time.

15:22Either I'm going to arrive feeling like crap, putting my body through a bunch of stress, white knuckling the entire way, or I'm just going to go, Hey, I'm going to be late. It's just the way it goes. I don't want to be late, but I'm at least enjoy the ride. And so there's beautiful state and there's suffering state, you know? And when you look at it kind of like, there's like a lot of different examples I can think of, of like the difference between the two. There's like, there's like expansion and feeling expanded in your life or feeling contracted in your life. It's like creative versus closed.

15:49It's empowered versus disempowered. It's possibility in your life or problems in your life. It's being trusting or trying to protect yourself. It's life feeling effortless or life feeling like it's a struggle. It's abundance versus scarcity. It's I get to do these things versus I have to do these things. It's being curious about life or being closed off to life. And our brain responds to whichever state you're in. There is more available to you. Your brain works better when you're in a beautiful state. Like I told you, your brain, when you're in a state of suffering, when you're in a state of stress, your brain stops sending blood flow to the prefrontal cortex.

16:29You're not making good decisions. There is more available to you when you are calm. You're more creative. You make better decisions, everything. So there's literally more available to you because your brain can find more that's available to you. So how do you get yourself into a beautiful state when you find yourself in to a state of suffering. Very simple. Five steps. Ready? Number one, you have to become aware. You have to build awareness within yourself. Become more aware of when your state shifts and when you don't really feel good anymore. I don't feel really good. What the hell was I just thinking?

16:57So first thing is become aware. Second thing is to take ownership of this. It's you who put yourself in that state. It's not the circumstance. It's not the situation. It's you and what you're thinking about that circumstance or that situation. The way that you're looking at the situation and that's it. And it's important because it puts you into a place of power. If you put yourself into that state, then you can get yourself out of that state. If you say, oh, you know, this situation did it to me, well, then you're just a victim of the circumstance and there's nothing you can do about it. But if you say, I'm the one in control, I'm the one who put myself in this state, then I'm the one who gave myself out of it.

17:37So that's number two. Number three, come back to the present moment. Come back to your body. You know, your mind is always in the past and future. It's always fear. It's always suffering. Not always. I don't want to say always. A lot of times we're in fear and we're in suffering and we're in worrying. Protection mode. Our body, it's always in the present moment. So go onto YouTube. Take five minutes. Just, you know, search breathwork on YouTube. Five minute breathwork on YouTube. Do five minutes of breathwork. Get yourself back in the present moment and feeling good. Number four is to start journaling or ask yourself out loud, what can I do right now to make me feel better?

18:10What can I do right now to make me feel better? You know, that deadline example that I gave, taking the next action and building momentum, that can make you feel better. The traffic example, putting on your favorite song, taking some deep breaths, that'll make you feel better. What can I do right now to make me feel better? And then the fifth thing is try to start focusing on gratitude more. Every morning, set your internal GPS of how you want to feel, how you want to interact with the world around you. Start focusing on, instead of like what you don't have and what you lack, what you've lost, and start thinking about those things.

18:42Oh, I don't have this, or I've lost this. I used to have this. Instead of focusing on lack and loss, start focusing on what you do have, what you can be grateful for. And that will put you from the very beginning, from when you wake up in the morning, into a beautiful state and help you stay there more throughout the day. So that is how you put yourself into a peaceful state and stop suffering and being so stressed out. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if, you know, like I said, you want to learn about how to work with us a little bit more, how to coach this a little bit more, go to mindsetmentor.com.

19:18Once again, mindsetmentor.com and check out the details there. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. and I hope that you have an amazing day.