When Squirrels Helped Me Practice Stress Mastery
TL;DR — If you want to start learning some simple and empowering tools to handle your stress, sign up right now for my upcoming webinar. You’ll learn how to reframe your stress and explore tools to master it instead of letting it steamroll you and potentially cause a whole host of health issues. Click below to register.
So what on earth do squirrels have to do with stress mastery? Well, the squirrels in our quiet little borough somehow manage to take out transformers several times a year, leading to isolated power outages. Whenever the power goes out now, we just assume it was the squirrels. The power going out isn’t ever convenient and earlier this spring it gave me a great opportunity to practice some of my stress mastery tools.
As much as we hate to admit it, we don’t have control over every aspect of our lives. Stuff happens. Plans get derailed. God has other ideas. How we respond to these situations has a big impact on not just our mental and emotional health, but our physical health as well.
When we’re living in stress — the near-constant, angsty, simmering stress that makes us grouchy or munchy or depressed — it takes a toll on our bodies. Our nervous system, our digestive system, our immune system, our moods, our menstrual cycles, our cardiovascular system, our skin; it can all be negatively impacted by chronic stress. According to The American Institute of Stress, “it has been estimated that 75 – 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress related problems.”(1) That sounds pretty dire, and it is.
The good news? There are a lot of simple things we can learn and practice to give our bodies the break from stress they so desperately need!
I know the tools and tips I share work because I use them myself all the time. The more I use them, the better I handle stressful situations as they come up. Due in large part to the amazing tools I’ve learned, I was able to get through a situation that a few years ago would have been upsetting and super-stressful.
Ironically enough, the last time I hosted my Reframing Stress webinar, I got some in-the-moment practice mastering my stress because four hours before I was scheduled to stream the webinar, we lost power. (And, not even kidding, it was actually due to the squirrels).
Yes, I freaked out for a few minutes. Got that out of the way. Then, I calmed myself down so I could get into problem-solving mode. (My husband is a really calm guy and he helped me calm down, too. Gotta give credit where credit is due!)
I prayed for peace, for guidance, and trusted that the Lord was going to provide. I brainstormed various locations that had wi-fi and would be quiet and private enough to do the webinar. I worked out a back up plan if I couldn’t find anywhere to go.
Praise God, our amazing local library had a conference room that opened up 20 minutes before I needed to run the webinar. They took pity on me and didn’t even charge me for the room.
So now I had a location with internet. However, once I was there, I found myself still troubleshooting: I realized that since I wasn’t at home, I didn’t have my notes set up on the screen like I normally would. I tried to print them from the library printers, but that didn’t work. There was lots of deep breathing as now I was only 10 minutes from the start of the webinar. Because I stayed calm, I was able to continue problem-solving and I ended up using my phone for my notes. Not ideal, but I was rolling with the punches.
8:00pm came, guests arrived, and we got started. Everything was going smoothly until — wouldn’t you know — the lights shut off. Apparently I’d been sitting so still that the motion sensor lights figured the room was empty! Thankfully my guests didn’t need to see me (they were looking at my slides), so I mentally prepared to finish the webinar in complete darkness. I paused my presentation to address the sudden darkness and thankfully, as I started to get up to tap the light switch, the lights came back on. Whew! I took a calming breath, thanked my attendees and dove right back into the presentation.
As I was wrapping up the webinar and answering questions from a few of the attendees, not only did the 15 minute and 10 minute closing announcements come over the speakers, but a well-meaning staff member popped in to remind me the library would be closing in 10 minutes. I had assured the staff I’d be done before the library closed, but I guess they wanted to make sure they’d be getting out on time. I can’t really blame them.
Despite alllllll of this I wasn’t overly stressed thanks to the same tools I shared on the webinar that night. Thanks to these tools I was able to roll with it and deliver a webinar I was really proud of. God had a plan all along. Of course He did.
Life throws us curve balls and when we have tools ready to go and habits in place to support ourselves, it can make the curve balls slightly less curvy. Learning to master our stress is an important part of improving our health. It’s something I’m always working on and love supporting my clients in working on, too.
If you’d like to learn more about the tools I used to calmly handle this crazy situation, register now for my free webinar happening August 22nd—squirrels or no squirrels!
The topic of stress is a big one for all of us. We all have it and it’s not going anywhere. Learning about our stress and finding ways to not just “manage” it, but “master” it, is so important that I dedicate an entire module of my 12-week program, The Exhausted Mom Solution, to this topic. The doors to the program will open again later this fall but in the meantime, you’re welcome to join the zero-obligation email wait list. Click here if you’re curious!
https://www.stress.org/americas-1-health-problem
