Just One Thing
Just One Thing
Stress and Day-To-Day Forgiveness
What seem to be negative encounters are unavoidable, as we go about our daily business, and each will elicit an almost uncontrollable stress response. This week, Lisa and Brad explore these constant social stressors and discuss a few techniques to get yourself out of the resultant negative thought loops.
Ever wonder why something as petty as someone cutting the line at Panera can send you spiraling into a stress response? Get ready to expose and explore the biology behind our fear responses, the impact of long-term stress on our health, and the sheer number of thoughts we have each day that can make it hard to stay present.
Let's journey together into the realm of self-forgiveness, understanding our natural wiring, and the art of thought reframing. We'll share strategies for scripting a different narrative, a method that helps us restructure negative thoughts. Discover how reframing our perception of daily events and interactions can foster an atmosphere of grace and forgiveness, ultimately reducing stress. Brace yourself for a deep dive into everyday forgiveness and stress management!
Hello and welcome to Just One Thing. I'm Brad Stearns, here with Lisa Stearns, and we're your hosts on this weekly exploration of simple ways to enhance your relationships, improve your health, manage your stress and just be happier. Now, settle in while we discuss Just One Thing. Greetings, hello, good day, salutations.
Speaker 2:I guess that was funnier than I thought I was kind of like welcome to the next episode of. Just One Thing.
Speaker 1:Just One Thing is the podcast of MindfulLivingtoday. You can find us on Facebook at the Mindful Couple. We'd love for you to join our supportive all-inclusive group, mindful Living Today with Lisa and Brad.
Speaker 2:On Facebook.
Speaker 1:On Facebook and also on Instagram. Today's episode is going to be a follow-on to a discussion Lisa and I had yesterday about a book she was looking through because I said what do you want to talk about tomorrow? And then she went looking in the basement and elsewhere to try to find all of her books. And there's a whole lesson in the effort to find the books, because it was quite upsetting, but we'll talk about that another time. But she did it.
Speaker 1:She found a book about forgiveness and how forgiveness can set you free, and we talked about a variety of topics around that and I'm going to entitle this and you can change it as we go depending on how the discussion goes but I'm going to call it stress and everyday forgiveness, because what I want to talk about is how occurrences happen, especially with other people, during your day-to-day activities. That really elicits a stress response and a lot of times we'll talk about why that happens and what's wrong with that, but it creates turmoil in your brain and, according to this book and according to our own experience, certain things that you can do to that I put in the category of forgiveness can actually help reduce that stress response and help you get through your day with a little more equanimity.
Speaker 2:And I would think, before we even go any further, I would think most of us and this was I had several realizations just looking into this topic. I think most of us would not recognize that being upset like feeling somebody was rude or….
Speaker 1:I like the example of if somebody cuts you off in line, steps in front of you, Panera, when you're ready to order your lunch or? Whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah and you think, oh, they're so rude. I don't think we normally associate that with a stress response.
Speaker 1:But it happens, but it is Right, I know for myself. I usually go one of two directions either like I don't want to curse, but like what the heck, what are you doing? What's going on there? And the other one is to like whatever, I don't care about it. But then I'm thinking to myself, jesus, am I not being assertive enough? Right. And then if I think I'm not being assertive enough, then that creates a stress response in me too, right, and I need to take care of this.
Speaker 1:I need to take care of this, you know, and in my mind this is not a good thing, but maybe I need to be more manly.
Speaker 2:Right, that's the way of a light bulb on it. That's stressful, right.
Speaker 1:And there's potential conflict there, which is stressful too. So all of those things can create stress.
Speaker 2:Just those little dings that happen day to day.
Speaker 1:So you do have a stress response and then go ahead. I was going to say then you start having this self-talk which I just talked about which just sort of spirals and makes you more and more stressed, which could have been a fairly minor incident.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, and I think that's one of the things that it's so important about today's episode is just recognizing that we, without our knowing it, we are constantly thinking and if something has upset us, our mind is looking, our mind is triggering us and telling us if you're upset, that means it's a danger. There's fear here because it's a biological.
Speaker 1:You are here because your ancestors going back, back, back, back back even to the prehumans, because they had this heightened stress response which made their muscles ready to work, which took blood away from their extremities so that they could respond, to run, to fight, to freeze, to do what was necessary to deal with the dangers that were in the environment. So those are the ancestors that lived long enough to reproduce, raise their youth, the ones that didn't have that, that were like oh, whatever, it's no big deal, it's a lion.
Speaker 1:They got ate up by the lion or killed by the opposite tribe, or didn't worry about getting food and starved. Now they didn't have that heightened, heightened fear, stress response, so they're not here anymore.
Speaker 2:But we still carry that today in a relatively safe society, but we still have that.
Speaker 1:And it's constantly looking for danger.
Speaker 2:It's constantly saying that is danger, right, and in reality it's not. The fact that someone was rude to you is not danger. It's uncomfortable, you might not have liked it, you might need to do something, but the basic, fundamental reality is it is not danger. But, your body still climbs to the after this Right.
Speaker 1:And over long terms, when that is constantly pumping your body with those stress hormones, stress chemicals that can have long term negative impacts on your health, on your well-being, everything.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that this book. I'm going to just jump right in, Please do yes, all right. So one of this I love statistics about certain things, so this one had some statistics which I love to share. So we have 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day.
Speaker 1:They're just constantly streamed. It's just right. Yeah, I mean, we talk about like, even when you meditate, you can't turn those off. They just are constantly happening. It's a matter of can I refocus, can I refocus, can I refocus?
Speaker 2:Right, and the more stressed you are, the more thoughts you have, and they're not good thoughts.
Speaker 1:They're speeding up to save you from danger. Exactly they are looking for a solution, they're looking for safety, they're looking to remind you of past dangers and so recognizing and also and I think we talked about a little bit yesterday is when that stress response occurs and all those thoughts speed up. It actually cuts off the functioning of your frontal cortex, where your logical brain is an executive function. So the more stressed you are, the less you can turn it off and the less you can actually be rational about what's going on.
Speaker 2:And also the other thing is when you have, let's just say, go back to the experience of someone cut you off in line, let's say For whatever reason that triggers in you gee that was rude.
Speaker 2:Once that happens, your brain also starts looking for other examples of when a person was rude or a particular person. If you have a relationship in your life where it's kind of contentious a lot, now your brain is going to go back and say oh, remember this one, remember that one, remember this one, remember that one, and it spirals up, and it's spiraling, and it's spiraling looking for more ways, and what you are actually doing when you are allowing that to follow.
Speaker 2:the brain's motivation behind this is, you are actually allowing your brain to put yourself in a chronic state of danger and stress and it doesn't turn off.
Speaker 1:I know people who live their whole life in that chronic state of being offended, alarmed, wanting to retaliate, wanting to run whatever those stress hormones lead them to do. They're constantly like that. So do you have some other statistics that you wanted to talk?
Speaker 2:about before. Well, yes, so before we move on, the National Science Foundation found that more than 80% of your thoughts are fear-based, which that number blew my mind. That's a huge number. To recognize that. That's actually the place I call it the playground. It's the playground my mind lives in.
Speaker 1:It's a scary place. It's a scary place.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's your default Right. We talk about that default system a lot. That's the world is dangerous.
Speaker 2:Right and 95% of your thoughts are repetitive.
Speaker 1:Excellent, so you're not having a new thought.
Speaker 2:You're actually having the same old thought about something that happened.
Speaker 1:And it's usually that spending around repeating it's grabbing other awful stuff too.
Speaker 2:It's like sticky notes, it's just picking up everything going along the way. So I think it's really powerful to just know that and one of the exercises they recommended in this book, which I thought was a really good way to kind of check in with yourself in terms of how much time like I can hear people saying that's not real my brain definitely isn't spending 90% of its thoughts. So every time you make a whole bunch of little tiny pieces of paper, like one inch by two inch when you have a thought, write it down, put it in a jar, crumble it up, put it in a jar and just see how long it takes you to fill up that jar with little crumble pieces of paper and that will start to really give you a visual demonstration of how many thoughts you're actually having and that the majority of those thoughts are fear based.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Life is horrible. You're constantly stressed.
Speaker 2:Very scary.
Speaker 1:How can we, what are a couple tools that we can use to sort of get out of this day-to-day stress mode that just happens because of interactions with people?
Speaker 2:Well, it's because the way we're wired, you know I think that's the thing is recognizing. This is the way we come out, naturally Right. And if we want to have a different life, if we want a different script, then we need to make the effort to create that different script. And so when you hear yourself, for example, say, well, that was rude, what you want to do is re-script that phrase.
Speaker 1:And I like the term re-script, reframe, re-frame.
Speaker 2:Right. So as soon as you hear yourself and you can, in my mind and in my body I can feel, when I'm getting ready to say something like that, there's something like a little bubble coming up from my stomach and I've got a little energy in my chest area.
Speaker 1:And it's To me it's not so different from a feeling, from anxiety, right, I'm sort of on the tippy toe about to trigger some of those fight-or-flight responses that are built into our system, right.
Speaker 2:So if you can catch yourself and hear that that you're going to say, or even after you've said it, but you say, well, that was rude, or that person was so insensitive or they just totally blew me off for lunch, flip that, rephrase it, reframe it and offer a second opportunity for why that happened, so give me an example. Somebody cuts me off out on the street.
Speaker 2:I'm driving down the road, somebody cuts me off. I'm kind of saying, well, screw you, dude, why are you cutting me off Right? And instead I'm going to think, wow, they must be having a really hard day. There must be an emergency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That something is important, that they have to get to where they're going as soon as I do that. That actually flips the frontal cortex, the prefront cortex in my head and allows executive function to happen.
Speaker 1:It allows a rational thought Sort of short circuits. It allows a fighter flight Absolutely. What could be an explanation for this? That's not personal.
Speaker 2:That's not an attack on me, that's not offensive right.
Speaker 1:Somebody steps in front of me and lying like wow, maybe they didn't see me, or maybe they saw that their order's ready and they don't need to.
Speaker 2:Or maybe they've got a mother that's sick at home that they've got to run home to because she can't be left alone, and they had to come out whatever, Because for the most part, 99% of the time you don't know what's going on in somebody else's head? No idea.
Speaker 1:And more often than not, it's not personal.
Speaker 2:That has nothing to do with you. Exactly Right, it's either somebody didn't notice or they're in their own head, or whatever, and that reframing is not a natural thing. Oh gosh no.
Speaker 1:So that takes a lot of practice. When something happens and we're talking like day-to-day interactions, this is not necessarily a big, serious conversation you're having with your spouse or your family.
Speaker 2:This is just like day-to-day annulances.
Speaker 1:that happen, it's the little things and in the context of that reframing and trying to come up with an alternative explanation, that's not a personal attack or making the person that's doing that a bad person. That's what I'm talking about just reducing that stress and that's what I put in the context of day-to-day forgiveness Right. I'm forgiving that person for cutting me off because they may have had a six-month mother and they're trying to get home to provide care or whatever.
Speaker 2:Right and I think, as you were saying, that I'm thinking how important that really is within those really close or interpersonal relationships, like with a partner or a spouse, because you may have had a terrible day and you come home and you're like all in your head about your terrible day and your spouse comes home and they're not helpful or they don't take care of the kids, or they didn't walk the dog or put the trash out or whatever it is, and you've got that will, like you, never do your thing in your mind. I think, if you can pause at that moment and actually acknowledge you know what. Maybe they had a rough day too, maybe they haven't even had a chance to tell me that something terrible happened to them, or maybe they're exhausted, maybe they had a huge meeting or a deadline or whatever you know, and just a little grace and I think of that as grace- A little grace, a little forgiveness, because forgiveness is part of grace, I think.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely Just making it an allowance that something else might have happened, and in doing that, that lowers the stress in your body.
Speaker 1:That simple practice, and that's what all this is about is making you healthier, making you happier by reducing that stress and allowing you to live your day with a little more equanimity.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that you talked about earlier was just the rapidity of the thoughts that you have, and you talked about writing you know your thoughts and crumpling them up and putting them in a jar or whatever. But that gives me another thought and what you can do to sort of short circuit the spiral of negativity is you talked about how fast the thoughts occur, but how slowly even the fastest writer can put his thoughts down, and so you elaborate on that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well they just. The science shows that because you think very quickly you cannot write as quickly as you think. The mere process of writing down a thought will slow your thoughts down enough to allow executive function to allow rational thought.
Speaker 1:So you get out of that fight or flight. You get out of that stress.
Speaker 2:That was kind of thinking.
Speaker 2:yes, and so that's, you know, other than journaling, just writing down Just one thought what's happening, the thoughts that are occurring as they're flying, If you have a place where you can grab pencil or paper or whatever and start writing down the thoughts that they put that is going to just slow it down, allow you to think more rationally, get you out of that fight or flight spiral that can happen from just simple occurrences day to day, right, right and so and we're not talking about like I love the idea of, you know, it's like a half inch piece of paper by two inches. It's a little tiny piece of paper. So this is not. We're not saying go journal about it, we're saying write down that one thought, like whatever that thought was. Write down that one thought. And once you write that one thought down, then that gives you the ability to look at and say, okay, how could I flip that? How could I come up with any other situation?
Speaker 1:Because the writing itself slows you down. And now you have an opportunity to reframe or re-script that, to say what's an alternative. That could happen, anything.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of when I have tried to do this with people before. A lot of times people get really locked into that Well, no, they're definitely offending me, they're definitely doing something else. So sometimes you may even have to say, well, okay, if another person that I didn't know did this to me, if it's something that you're used to having that connection with you know, step outside that and say, okay if somebody else that I didn't know did this to me, maybe what could be their motivation? And that may give you that little pause, that breath that you need to be able to reframe that, because sometimes when we're in a contentious relationship, it is hard to see that somebody is not doing something.
Speaker 1:Historically, Right, so that writing is just really a tool to help you reframe when your brain might be hijacked by a stress response. Yes, yes, we really just touched the surface of this and I think we just wanted to make you aware that all these stress ores are happening all the time. Constantly, and it's hijacking your brain. It is, it's taking away your peace.
Speaker 1:It's taking away your happiness day today, your rational thought, your rational thought, and so we just wanted to say that you know there are steps you can take to sort of forgive people.
Speaker 2:Right and show a little grace.
Speaker 1:And it removes you from that stress, or and you have a little more calmness.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and so what's your one thing.
Speaker 1:My just one thing is just recognize, man, these stressors are hitting you all the time, and if you're not aware of it, you're not going to be able to take the steps to fix it.
Speaker 2:Right, you're at the mercy of your brain, right, right. And I think mine is going to have to be similar, because I think, as with most things, it starts with that recognition. Can you just recognize that there is a dialogue going on in your mind that's constantly saying well, that was stupid of them, why did they do that? Why?
Speaker 1:They must hate me, they must hate me, you know.
Speaker 2:whatever it is. Can you just for one minute, be aware that those thoughts are coming and pause?
Speaker 1:Really valuable topic. I think so too, and glad you listened to us today. Yes, and until next week. This has been.
Speaker 2:Just One Thing.