Shaking Up Routines: Breaking Free from Stressful Habits

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Hi there, and welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Dr. Christine Li, your host, and this is episode number 191. I crafted this particular episode with a lot of love because I wanna help you learn how to stress less, how to learn how to get off the stress train, and how to cope with challenging situations by developing a lot of new coping mechanisms, ones that will help you day to day even when there is no stress around. In this episode, I'm gonna teach you about how to use gratitude throughout your day, how to start each day with a calm and centered mind, how to make sure you avoid emotional overload and the steps to take every day to get out of that dramatic, catastrophic type of thinking and much more. I can't wait to share this episode content with you. And in this episode, I share a lot of stories about my recent trip to the Pittsburgh area. That is just all meant to help you really understand how you can get off the stress train anytime you decide you don't belong there.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:22]:
Alright. Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:30]:
Hi. I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time For Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:16]:
Hi, my friends. This episode is called shaking up routines, breaking free from stressful habits, and the inspiration for the content in this episode comes from my recent less than a week long trip to the town of Washington in Pittsburgh. I'd never been to the Pittsburgh area before. It was lovely. And a few things happened during that trip that caused me to think, let's make a podcast episode about this. And the title is relevant here because I think anytime we travel anywhere, anywhere that's outside our specific radius, we end up needing to shift our mind frames. We need to start thinking differently. We start seeing people differently.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:06]:
We start experiencing things differently. At least that's the case for me. And I wanted to share a couple of stories to teach some pretty interesting ways for you to practice getting off the stress train, and coping with stress when it happens, and coping with it well. Alright. So the first idea that I have for you is that when you're traveling or when you need to get off the stress strain, one recommendation I would have for you is to touch base with yourself, especially in the morning, if you can do that. And I think that might be obvious to some of you, and to others, it might be really like mind opening, and I hope it is mind opening for everyone who's listening. When you are in a stressful zone, or you're in a very busy period, or it's summertime and you're interested in traveling, visiting with friends, whatever your plans are, you can forget that the person that you actually need to visit with first is yourself. You want to set yourself up well in the morning for being calm, have a calm nervous system, to have a vision of how the plan for the day is going to go, what you want to see happen during that day, And also to just prepare your mind and mood for whatever is going to happen, whether it's planned to be challenging, like a flight out of town, or something simple.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:48]:
You wanna make sure that you've got that essential calm already set up first thing in the morning. The second strategy that I have for you here is to practice gratitude and self assurance whenever you can. And I mean throughout the day, repeatedly, as often as you can. And lately, I've been teaching my students and clients that whenever you're making a step forward, no matter how small or insignificant you feel that progress is, that it is important to practice that celebration piece, recognizing that you're moving forward, recognizing that this is a shift and a change, recognizing that you're getting closer and closer to your ideal outcome, to your big goal, and that is something to be celebrated. Now the reason why I wanna talk about gratitude and self assurance here is because on my way to Pittsburgh, I went to LaGuardia and was on a plane waiting to take off for about 3 hours. I don't think that's an exaggeration. It was a long time, and it ended up that that flight was canceled. They claimed it was weather.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:04]:
We gotta believe them. And I ended up having to return home and return back to LaGuardia the next day to take the same flight out in the next day. And that is a situation that was upsetting, a little bit frustrating, maybe a lot frustrating. But I was grateful that this was actually a leisure trip, that I was fine, that everybody around me was fine, that I wouldn't have to experience bad weather while up in the air inside a flight. And then another thing happened that made me really just dig deep into the gratitude and the self assurance that, you know what? You don't have to get really riled up about this. Everything is gonna be fine. What happened was I came across a young couple who was now on the verge of doing their 3rd day of trying to get to their hometown of Pittsburgh. And just hearing their story very briefly and seeing their fatigue and their exhaustion and the fact that they were keeping themselves together and sane was all I needed to make sure that I settled back into a calm space where I could just reflect, wow, I get to go home, sleep in my bed, appreciate the fact that I'm safe, and that I can get home really easily.

Dr. Christine Li [00:07:39]:
And that's a mini story, but I'm hoping you get my point here at that there's so many reasons and ways that we can practice gratitude. We can practice gratitude that we can even fly to places that we wanna visit instead of having to do long car rides. Whatever you wanna do, just shape the story so that you know you can come out feeling that you are being taken care of, that you have all the resources that you need, and that there's always a solution to any problems that you might be currently facing. Alright. So remember to keep flexible and keep perspective. It's so important to keeping yourself off that stress train. The 3rd tip that I have for you is to learn how to reframe your story. We can take the Pittsburgh LaGuardia Airport story here once again.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:30]:
Instead of thinking that Spirit Airlines is against you or the weather is against you or other people are trying to block your happiness, what you wanna do is reframe the story in a way where you don't feel threatened, where you don't feel like you need to feel vulnerable or exhausted or frustrated by something, what I suggest you do to help you reframe any story is to tell yourself that the challenging situation and you are coexisting. That it's not the situation versus you. It's not people versus you. It's the situation that happens to be unfolding in real time and you coexisting. And I'm hoping that that kind of storytelling ability, when you adopt it, will help you to make it through any airport delays or any frustration or any negative stories that you might have inside your head and heart. It's easy to come up with a negative story. We end up sounding a little bit paranoid or a little bit angry, whatever you tend to do. I'm giving you this option to just chill that whole system out, chill the storytelling out, decide, you know what, it's just me and the situation coexisting, and we're gonna all get through this.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:53]:
And it always happens that way, doesn't it? Alright. The 4th strategy that I have for you is related to number 23. You wanna handle tasks without spending all of your emotional energy at once, whether it's dealing with physical clutter or stressful tasks. You wanna approach the task really pragmatically. You don't need to create a lot of drama around physical clutter. There's enough drama that clutter elicits from us. We don't need to add layers of stress and drama to the situation. And my suggestion here is always that you only need 2 things to get out of a dramatic situation.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:38]:
You need to decide what you're gonna do. So that's the action step. That's 1. And the second thing you need is a plan. Generally, it's a time, like a clock time where you're gonna do something. So to take the example of the physical clutter, let's say, you wanna clear your work desk so that you can finally concentrate. The clutter is frustrating you. You're getting really worked up.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:03]:
You're mad at yourself for coexisting with this clutter. What are you gonna do about it? The way to get out of that stressful escalating situation, and when we don't declutter our desks, it just gets worse and worse. Right? The way to get yourself out of that situation is to give yourself the assignment, I'm going to spend 15 minutes decluttering my workspace so I can concentrate again at 4 o'clock. Remember to always assign a time frame because otherwise, it just becomes a floating thought in your mind ready to distract you at any time. And let's get that clutter off our desks anyway because clutter really is proven to be totally distracting. So believe in yourself. Believe in your ability to handle and get through challenging situations, like clutter, plane delays, whatever you're facing this summer. Take the time to make an action plan and set a time to take action on that plan.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:04]:
Treat yourself well throughout, drink your water, get good sleep, get good exercise, and then move forward. Alright. The 5th strategy is, I think, one that we don't talk about enough, and that is to believe in your own ability to get good help for yourself. I think in America, where I reside, there is such an emphasis on doing things by yourself, doing things independently, being independent, being, you know, kind of flown and grown, as they will say, the for the college kids and beyond. And I think there's so much value in knowing when getting help can be a really wise and healthy way to cope with stress, to cope with situations that are complicated, to cope with situations where you don't have that much time to go through everything and be just perfect about everything. Sometimes we really need to ask for help, to ask for it quickly, to ask for it sincerely, and to then rein that help in and get people on board with us. I have a friend who is about to do a big move from my hometown to a new hometown of hers. Hi, Rosie.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:30]:
And I just know that, you know, when you have situations like that, you wanna make sure that your heart is open to receiving help and to asking for it. I just wanna add that reminder to you. If you haven't asked for help in a while, maybe today is a good day to check with your own schedule, to check with your to do list, to check with your heart, and see who can I reach out to? It might be just the ticket to get off that trust that stress train. Okay. The final tip that I have today is similar to getting help and knowing that you need help. I want you to try to avoid seeing yourself as being stuck, and I want you to try to avoid using any type of stuck language. Stuck language can include the word stuck. It can mean avoiding the word hard.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:28]:
It can mean avoiding the word impossible. Whatever type of language you tend to use to trigger yourself accidentally or on purpose into inaction, I want you to clear that out of your vocabulary and you will still be able to communicate very effectively. I'm gonna argue that your communication will be that much more effective when you eliminate the no language, the n o language, when you eliminate the can't, the shouldn't, all those kinds of negative limiting types of language and belief systems. When you eliminate those, all you have in front of you is a clear runway for your plane to take off, for your success goals to be seen, addressed, worked on, and then delivered. It's so much fun to feel like nothing is really in your way, that stress can't eat you anymore. Eat eat you anymore? No. I didn't mean to say that. Stress can't eat up your time, can't eat up your motivation, can't eat up your clear thinking anymore.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:37]:
That's what I mean to say. So clear your language, clear your mindset, and get off that stress train. Decide you are okay. You are good enough, and today is a perfectly fine day to start. If none of these tips end up helping you for some reason, I do believe at least one of them is gonna be helpful to you. I want you to rely on this bonus tip that I'm just creating right now. I want you to decide what is your core wish for this situation. If everything just became peaceful and calm and you became peaceful and calm, how would you want things to look? How would you want to feel? How would you want to behave? And what outcome would you want to foster and make happen? You get to decide these things.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:31]:
You're such a main actor. You are the actor in your life and in your environment. Doesn't matter what's happening with Spirit Airlines or in Pittsburgh. You get to decide, how are we gonna go through today? And, of course, we wanna go through it well without stress. And thank you for listening to my storytelling session today about LaGuardia, about Spirit Airlines, about Pittsburgh, and about stress. I wanna help you to really gradually over time, really become a master of your time, your energy, and your mood. It's gonna be just one big party, and we're already starting the party now. Because we know that we wanna develop that good mood right at the starting gate.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:20]:
Right? And to help you with this and to help you remember what I've just taught you in this episode, I've developed a free download for you, and you can get that summary of today's session by going to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/stressless. Again, that's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/stressless to get that free download. I will see you next week. I've got a whole series of episodes coming up about these topics of taking care of yourself and reaching your success goals more easily and quickly. I look forward to seeing you then. Bye.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:02]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:43]:
Talk to you soon.