In this episode of the Feel Good Effect Podcast, we’re talking about simple habits to handle stress with Dr. Liz Stanley in this reaired show. These are simple habits and mindsets to help let light into the dark so that you can better handle stress, avoid burnout, and let the light into your everyday life. 

These Simple Habits Will Help You Handle Stress Right Now

Imagine that you are in a room by yourself and it starts getting darker so slowly that you don’t really notice it until it’s very, very dark.

So dark that you cannot find your way out.

As it gets darker, you start looking around for a way to get light in.

And then, in the darkness, you see a tiny slit of light from a window.

But you can’t get that window to open or the slit of light to widen.

Here’s the thing, there is a way to widen that window: simple habits to handle stress.

There is a profound misunderstanding of what stress is right now and a harmful idea being perpetuated that you can just positive-think your way out of hard times. 

Holding stress

Stress is something that is experienced in the body.

There are specific things you can do to discharge it without it turning into something bigger and more destructive in your life, mental health, and body.

Let’s say stress is this darkness, rooted in external factors that you don’t have control over, which might be the election, things happening during this time since March 2020, parenting at this moment, being a stay-at-home caregiver, or loneliness.

There are so many factors beyond our control that are adding to this darkness.

If you’re sitting in this darkness, and I tell you to positive think your way out of it, will that turn on a light?

Alternatively, we can practice what Dr. Liz Stanely describes as widening the window, or creating inner resources and skills to cope with outside stressors so that we can let that light in ourselves.

We can’t control everything that is happening, but we have control over how we choose to respond.

We’re talking about choosing where to focus your attention versus choosing what happened to you and three kinds of stressors (what happened in your part as a child, traumatic stressors, and stressors of everyday life).

Other tools to widen your window:

  • The Feel Good Effect book, out now and available wherever books are sold
  • Liz’s MFIT course, out on November 15 (use this link to support the show)

View the full show notes here.

Guest bio

Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD, is an associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University. She is the creator of Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, taught to thousands in civilian and military high-stress environments. MMFT® research has been featured on 60 Minutes, ABC Evening News, NPR, and in Time magazine and many other media outlets. An award-winning author and U.S. Army veteran with service in Asia and Europe, she holds degrees from Yale, Harvard, and MIT. She’s also is a certified practitioner of Somatic Experiencing, a body-based trauma therapy.

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