Stress, and the “Goldilocks” Technique
In the last few days, I’ve heard from a number of friends who are being crushed by stress, or trying to help people feeling confusion, anger, despair, depression. This is for them.
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I was stunned, shocked, and in the single worst emotional state in my life. My first wife had told me that she didn’t want to live with me any more, and this after I’d sold the house and moved to the Northwest, as she has asked.
I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver Washington, where, as I’ve often said, all I had in the world was my dog, a bed, a television set…and a gun. Spent a lot of time staring at the wall. I’ve never been suicidal, but for the first time I understood how people got there.
Wasn’t going over the waterfall, but I could hear the rapids.
You know the voices: I’m alone. No one loves me. I must be an ugly, twisted thing, and I’ll never find happiness again…I must deserve this misery…
I was in TROUBLE. And crawling out of that pit was one of the hardest, most painful thing I’ve ever done. And after I was back on my feet, I swore I was going to find ways to get out of that depression more rapidly if it ever happened again (and something ALWAYS eventually happens again, in a new and devastating way). Also wanted to have something to teach others when THEY hit that spot.
You know the one: everything looks bad, which creates (and reflects) stress, which decreases flexibility and narrows perception, which diminishes options, which makes the stress worse, in a descending spiral.
Depression is fear with no one to fight, and no where to run. Clinical depression would seem to be a state in which the nervous system is CONSTANTLY sending you such messages, regardless of the external circumstances, requiring chemical intervention. If that is your issue, PLEASE SEE A DOCTOR.
But if there are real issues hammering you, such that reducing those problems would relieve the problem, THEN SO WILL CHANGING YOUR PERCEPTIONS. But how?
What PRECISELY would I say to myself, if I could send a message in a bottle back 25 years in time?
This relates to the same philosophy driving the “Sentence a day” method: that there is a minimum sustaining amount of work that will take you to your goal. That the voice saying “you don’t have enough time” is usually lying to you, but if it can convince you hours a day are required to accomplish something, that lie survives.
But if you can actually make positive change in a few minutes, and you can BELIEVE that, then you will hear the negative voices shrieking disaster at you…while you observe, and truly grasp for the first time that the voices in your head lie to you.
With writing, that minimum might well be “A sentence a day.” But what about dealing with stress?
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The breakthrough came from a combination of notions.
- Our emotions are created by a combination of WHAT we focus on, HOW we use our bodies, and the STORY we tell ourselves about its meaning.
- The BODY is the “canary in the coal mine.” Stress shifts our posture, breathing patterns, movement, and muscle tension. Physiological change. This is why lie detectors work: emotional stress correlates to deception with a wide variety of changes in skin temperature, galvanic skin response, pupil dilation, heartbeat rate, and more stuff. In essence, then, if your physiology doesn’t change, if your body doesn’t react to the stress, YOU AREN’T FEELING IT.
The simplest doorway in is the breathing, because it is the ONLY physical process that is both voluntary and autonomic. It is, therefore, the gateway to the unconscious mind, where most of the real action is going on.
If you can breathe “as if” you are relaxed, for that time you ARE relaxed. Deep, slow, diaphragmatic “belly breathing” any yoga or Chi Gung teacher can show you, or you can learn yourself by laying down and balancing a book on your tummy. Slow your breathing to fewer than 4 per minute. When you inhale, the belly expands, goes UP like blowing up a balloon.
But how much time does it take? If you don’t have an hour a day to meditate, is it even worth trying? That chittering monkey in your head will tell you you are surrounded by emergencies, must act NOW or all is lost. Or, that there is nothing you can do, so why bother? Clearly, the more you have to do to get the result, the easier it is to convince you this “there’s nothing I can do” is accurate.
So…what is that “minimum dose”?
FIVE MINUTES A DAY.
Just five minutes. Would you invest five minutes a day to escape stress? To prevent yourself from falling into panic? You have the time. Hell, here you are on social media, burning a lot more time than that. DON’T LIE TO YOURSELF.
The ego defines your identity, and if your identity is partially “one who is paralyzed by fear” then it will literally try to stop you from changing that. Remember Captain Kirk saying “I need my fear?”
Fear may be and is natural, but you don’t NEED it to survive. You need to pay attention, and take efficient and effective actions. Fear gets your attention, but so does love. Fear of being afraid is probably one of the most terrible, paralyzing emotional states imaginable, an erndless hall of mirrors that sucks all your life energy and gives nothing in return.
But if you can commit to just five minutes a day, you can break the cycle of stress pounding your body, changing your physiological response, which limits perception and action, which leads to greater stress.
Instead…you change your physical responses for the better, relaxing, entering the “eye of the storm.” Yes, the problems are still here, but you are in a position from which you can make rational choices and see more existing opportunities, leading to better problem-solving, and better choice of problems to solve. Leading to less stress. And when our stress level is in pace with our capacity to adapt to it?
WE GROW. That’s what happens. Stress isn’t the problem…EXCESS STRESS is the problem. Maladaption is the problem. Too much or too little and we break down. When we get “just enough” we grow.
The Goldilocks Formula. Not too much. Not too little.
Just right. But how do you do that?
This is the beautiful thing. If you wanted to learn to play piano, and had an hour a day, you would be better served to break that into five 12-minute sessions than do it all at one time, because of something called “synaptic facilitation.” Short sessions, quitting prior to fatigue. This is true for all learning. So here is the trick: yes, you can smash your stress in five minutes, but IT ISN’T FIVE MINUTES ALL AT ONE TIME.
Set the timer on your smart phone to three hours. Every three hours, stop and do sixty seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic belly breathing. Then set your phone for another three hours. Do this all day long, about five times a day. Minimum total of five minutes. You are literally teaching your body to relax, center, go into the “eye of the storm.”
You can do it more often, of course. If you are being torn apart by stress, do this HOURLY. Every hour, top of the hour, stop and breath. Brendon Burchard’s “Peak Performance” system says an hourly break to walk or exercise or stretch for five minutes optimizes performance so that you get MORE done every hour than people who just try to push through. So there’s no downside. To trying it for sixty seconds.
If you say you don’t have the time…that’s your ego lying to you.
If you say “you’ll remember” and don’t set an alarm…and then don’t do it? And don’t change that behavior? You are lying to yourself.
If you say you are crushed by stress, but aren’t sure about this technique and don’t try it? Some part of you is enjoying the agony. Your demons are driving the bus, and those little bastards will take you over the cliff.
Five minutes. EVERYONE has five minutes, sixty seconds at a time. And that’s all it takes. Again, the steps:
- Set your smartphone alarm for three hours.
- Every hour divisible by three: 9,12,3,6,9 (for instance) stop and do sixty seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. Standing, reclining, walking, sitting, driving. Once you learn the technique you can do it anywhere, at any time.
- Google is your friend. Here is a link to get you started: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgTL5G1ibIo
How long will it take to feel the difference? Some people will feel it immediately. First session. Others will have to practice for a few weeks. Six weeks seems to be the maximum required to create this new relationship with your body. You will begin to sense when you are carrying extra tension, when you are breathing rapidly or shallowly, and by consciously adjusting these things, you will start being calm when people around you are panicking. Stress will automatically trigger a positive, adaptive response. And your calm will calm the people around you. Taking them with you into the “eye of the storm.”
Win-Win.
This technique, which we call the “Five Minute Miracle” is NOT to be “understood” and kept as a conceptual thing. That won’t help at all, any more than “understanding” a sandwich nourishes your body. YOU MUST PRACTICE IT. Actually do the physical drill. Sixty Seconds. Five times a day or hourly if necessary.
The life you save may be someone who loves and needs you to be strong. For instance…the guy in the mirror.
Namaste
Steve