Confessions of a Success Coach: The Five Minute Stress Zapper

It was 9:25 AM Monday morning and I was waiting, phone in hand with my eyes glued to my email looking for word from my 9AM coaching client. I had been working with Roger {not his real name] for over six years. Not once had he been late or missed a call. Something was wrong.

I called Roger’s office and got his voice mail . After several tries he answered his cell phone.

“Roger, are you okay?”

Anxiously he said, “Geez, Mandy, I’m sorry.” I could hear his fast, shallow breath. He seemed almost out of control. “I was almost killed. A tractor trailer jackknifed – there’s a five-car pile up now. Oh my G-d!”

He had avoided the accident but he was in no shape to drive. Luckily the traffic wasn’t going anywhere.

What Roger was experiencing was a natural reaction to a life threatening emergency. It was if his adrenal switch flipped off his rational mind, shooting all his blood and energy flow down to his limbs. That is what happens when you are under stress. It is nature’s way of giving you the jolt you need to fight an attacker or get the heck out of dodge.

So what does this have to do with you?

Everything.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have been over exposed to fear and anxiety over the last couple months. Fear about the the economy, fear about the markets, fear of not having, fear of asking too much, fear of asking too little. Fear of loss. Fear of gain. Fear of what you shoulda, coulda woulda done if only …

Sometimes all you have to do is THINK about, say, m’oney pressure, and FFFRRRRRRRPP your body gets a shot of adrenaline, your skin gets cold and you feel your heart thumping in your chest.

Isn’t that a weird reaction?

All because of a little bundle of cells in your Limbic brain?

And it’s not the smart part of your brain that reads the paper or solves Soduko puzzles.

Your limbic brain handles the animal stuff — Fighting, Fleeing, Foraging and of course Procreation. :)

But when you are under financial stress, you actually don’t need the adrenaline and surge of energy. You don’t need the blood to stop flowing to your extremities and your higher brain functions to shut off.

You don’t NEED to fight off an animal; you NEED to wake up your creativity.

You NEED to make good decisions. You NEED to think clearly.

What you NEED is focus.

When you are under stress, you essentially become a scared animal.

Scared animals can run fast but they are lousy at making money.

On the other hand, creative focused humans FILL the entire list of the Forbes 400 wealthiest people on earth.

Some people talk about going from “fear to power”, I think a better approach is to go from fear to focus.

Wake up MORE of your brain and use that extra brainpower to creatively solve the problem.

So how do you do that?

Luckily I learned a kinesthesiology technique many years ago that is like psychological CPR. In less than five minutes– right there and then — over the phone, I was able to help Roger totally disintegrate the stress he was experiencing. That same technique can help you melt away stress, eliminate fear-based thinking and open your mind to it’s creative, solution-oriented potential. Or not.

You see if it were simply up to me, I could zap away every little teeny bit of tension you feel, each fear-based thought you have, just like sunlight melting a cube of ice. Only quicker. A lot quicker. But it is not up to me. I can ONLY give you the technique, but YOU have to do it.