Ultimate Stress Buster
Module 2: How are You Sabotaging Yourself?

Transforming negative and limiting beliefs

If you tell yourself and others “I’m no good at dealing with stress” “I just can’t cope” you are in effect reinforcing this in your own mind. Now, because we always want to be right, it should come as no surprise to learn that our actions then follow this belief and we become someone who is not good at dealing with stress. This obviously is not helping the situation.

So, here’s what you can do to transform those negative and limiting beliefs. Once you have identified your negative or limiting beliefs, for each one ask yourself, ‘How does this belief serve me?’

Very often, there is a benefit to be gained from holding onto a limiting belief, perhaps avoidance of dealing with the situation. Ask yourself, ‘what difference would it make to my life if I did not hold this belief?’ Now go through each belief and decide what you would like to change it to.

For example, if your belief was, ‘I’m no good at dealing with stress’, you could replace this with, ‘I am learning new ways of coping with stress’ or I am open to finding new ways of dealing with stress’.

Make sure that when you transform your belief that it’s personal e.g. using I am, I have etc, positive and in the present tense.

Great expectations

Related to beliefs are your expectations. If it’s an event or situation that you are worrying about, what are your expectations of this situation? Do you expect that ‘I’m going to find this really stressful and I’ll probably end up getting a headache’.

You may have heard the saying ‘where you look is where you go‘ – in other words, if you expect a negative outcome then that’s probably what you will find. You have conditioned yourself to pick up on anything that’s stressful about your work or situation because that is what agrees with your belief – and you always like to be right.

So, check out your expectations. There may be some negative beliefs lurking behind those expectations – if so, and add them to your list.

Hold back on self-criticism

How often do you criticise yourself by saying to yourself ‘I should have ….’. Reprimanding yourself in this way can increase your stress levels as it serves to remind you that you are not performing in the way you’d like to.

When you’re under a good deal of stress cut yourself some slack, be kinder to yourself. Remind yourself that you have a choice and change your ‘shoulds’ into ‘cans’ or ‘coulds’.

For example:

‘This report needs to be in by Wednesday, I should have finished it last week!’

could become

‘This report needs to be in by Wednesday, so what can I do about it?

Using cans or coulds encourages you to look for solutions and reminds you that you have a choice. Criticising yourself for what you should or should not have done just adds to your stress.

The subtle saboteurs

You are responsible for your own stress levels, the way you choose to react to situations and the beliefs you choose to adopt has a tremendous influence on how you cope with stress.

However, although your thoughts and beliefs play a significant role there are subtle saboteurs that can also have an effect on your stress levels.

• Chemical and nutritional stressors are not always taken into consideration but can contribute to the stress you experience.
• Caffeine raises the levels of stress hormones, making it more difficult to sleep and can make you more irritable. So, how much coffee or tea (which also has caffeine in) are you drinking?
• Smokers often feel relaxed after a cigarette. However smoking puts your body under chemical stress. If you smoke, try taking your pulse before and after a cigarette and think about the difference.
• An unbalanced or unhealthy diet can generate stress. So are you expecting your body to cope with stressful situations when it’s being provided with insufficient nutrients to deal with the stress? Did you know that your requirement for Vitamins B and C increases dramatically when the body is under stress?

You wouldn’t fill a formula one racing car with 2 star petrol and expect it to perform well, so why expect your body to cope well with stress when you are not providing it with what it needs to cope with stress?

Finally, sleep is something that often gets overlooked when it comes to dealing with stress because it’s so simple. Sleep is the body’s natural way of restoration and regeneration. So how much sleep are you getting? Do you sit in front of the television until late instead of taking yourself off to bed for an early night?

Increasing the amount of sleep you have allows your body to recuperate and helps to bring down your stress levels, so stop sabotaging yourself and give your body some support!

Actions of the Week

1. Take a look at your negative and limiting beliefs

Write down any you can think of and the reword them to transform them into more positive and supportive beliefs.

2. Become aware of and cut out criticism of yourself and others by watching your ‘shoulds’.

Listen to yourself – every time you use the word ‘should’ think about some other way you could have expressed yourself.

3. Take a look at what you are feeding your body

4. Are you providing your body with what it needs in order to help you cope with stress?

If you don’t know what foods you need to eat in order to counteract stress, then where or from whom can you find out?

5. Are you getting enough sleep?

Try an experiment of going to bed one hour earlier each night, even if you don’t go to sleep. Play some relaxing music or do something that you’ll find relaxing – reading a horror or murder mystery story may not produce the desired effect!

This week you’ve learnt to become more aware of how you can sabotage your efforts to cope with stress through observing your negative beliefs and thoughts and by not providing your body with what it needs to help you. Next week we’ll be looking at how you can regain control and increase your ability to deal with stress.