Live Your Best Life!

Unfortunately everyone experiences stress at some point in their lives. We tend to think that things like work, relationships, health, or finances cause our stress, however, that is not the case. It is what we are thinking about things like work, relationships, health, or finances that cause our stress. While some thoughts that create stress can be motivating and help you perform better, too much stress can be harmful to  your physical and mental health. 

There are strategies that will help you manage your stress by helping  you slow down your nervous system, release tension, and take care of yourself physically, however, it is also important to learn how to manage your thoughts that are ultimately creating your stress.  

I am going to share 10 strategies for managing stress with the last one being the one I encourage you to practice over and over since it is the one that relates to your thinking patterns that can increase or decrease your...

There is a good chance you have heard that it is important to have a gratitude practice...but why? When I work with clients, if I recommend a strategy for them to try, I am always sure that they understand why it is recommended and how it is designed to impact the wiring of their brain, their automatic thought patterns, and/or their nervous system. Before breaking down ways of having a gratitude practice, I want to be sure to share with you why having a gratitude practice is often a recommendation for individuals who are experiencing low mood, anxiety, stress, worry, and negative thinking patterns. 

Because we cannot possibly pay attention to everything happening around us each day, our brains are conditioned to detect and “filter in” certain things in our surroundings, while filtering other things out that it does not consider as important to pay attention to. The default mode of the unconscious brain is to look for negative things, challenging things, dangerous...

Do you have days where you are feeling energized and on fire, and then have other days where you can’t seem to muster up the energy to get anything done? Or maybe you have days where you are feeling really good about your life in general and other days where all you can see and think about are negative things. This is not an uncommon human experience and it is also not something that is completely outside of your control. 

Your energy and whether you are feeling positive or negative overall is tied to your thoughts and your mindset. Often we think these things are tied to situations happening around us, or to what other people are doing to us, however, this is never the case. Things happening around you can spark thoughts, but it is always your thoughts that create your feelings. This is important to note because this means that if you change what you are thinking, you can change how you are feeling. When you are intentional about this, you can create habits around...

Do you wish you had more joy in your life? Do you keep waiting for outside circumstances or events to bring you more joy and happiness? Do you ever find yourself saying, “I will be happy when…”? Have you ever heard someone say that a person makes them so happy, or that they were so happy that they got a promotion, or that they are so happy they are finally starting a family? 

While it is true that people, external circumstances, and events can trigger us to feel joy, it is ultimately what we think about people, circumstances, and events happening in our lives that create the feelings we experience.

In each of the situations mentioned above, it is what someone is thinking about another person, a promotion, or starting a family that creates the feeling of joy. For example, starting a family is an event or circumstance that happens in someone’s life. One person could feel immense joy because this is something they have been wanting for as long as...

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines overwhelm as “to cover over completely, submerge”, “to overcome by superior force or numbers”, or “to overpower in thought or feeling”. When we, as humans, experience overwhelm it is usually the third definition of “to overpower in a thought or feeling”. Overwhelm is a feeling you experience when you believe you have too much on your plate and/or when you think life has thrown something at you that is more than you can handle. 

Overwhelm can hit you all at once if something significant happens in your life, or it can build slowly until one day you feel like you don’t know how you can handle everything that you have to do. Overwhelm can result in ruminating thoughts about the circumstance(s) causing the overwhelm, challenging feelings of stress, anxiety, or fear, and/or physical symptoms in the body such as an upset stomach, tightness of the chest, fatigue, or headaches. When...

Do you tend to see and focus on the negative aspects of a situation? “Disqualifying the positive” is what is referred to as a thought distortion, or a cognitive distortion. What this means is that your brain observes a situation and filters in the negative aspects of the situation and ignores, or discounts any of the positive aspects of the situation. If you are someone who experiences this, you are not alone. Our brains have what is called a “negativity bias” which causes them to highlight the negative things around us, while bypassing positive things. 

The reason it does this is because, typically when you are experiencing negative things, you also experience negative emotions. This can raise an alarm with your brain because with negative emotions comes discomfort. Your brain does not want you to experience this discomfort, and it thinks that if it continues to focus on the negative thing that somehow it can prevent it from happening again and...

Thought distortions, also referred to as “thinking traps”, “cognitive distortions”, and “stinkin’ thinkin’”, are faulty ways of thinking that hold us back, cause us to experience negative emotions, and/or impact our self-esteem and overall confidence. There are many different forms of thought distortions which is why I am writing a series of blog article about them. You can check out Part #1 on the Live Your Best Boss Lady Life Blog HERE, which focuses on Filtering, Overgeneralizations, and Personalization. What is helpful is to understand them, to take the time to notice if your fall into any of these thinking patterns, and then to start to challenge them. If you do notice that you fall into some of these patterns, there is no shame. Most of us do at least some of the time, however, by reading this you will start to be able to recognize the problematic patterns and begin to shift them.

In this article, I will review three...

On a scale from 1 to 10 (with 1 being none and 10 being explosive), where would you rate your stress level right now? Having a high stress level ongoing is toxic for your mind and body. High stress levels can cause people to overeat, to overdrink, to have difficulty focusing, to make poor decisions, to have difficulty sleeping, and can increase people’s risk for heart and other health problems.

I believe there are two ways of reducing stress levels. One is a quicker fix, but not a permanent fix. The second is more of a long-term fix. I will share them both and if you are someone who experiences high levels of stress ongoing, I would encourage you to try them both.

Quicker fixes for managing stress.

The following suggestions are things you can do when you are experiencing stress. Engaging in these activities will help calm your system down or help you release tension or help distract you from your thoughts that are causing you to feel stress. These are all great...