The Do Nothing Challenge That Might Save You

Episode 118

Stress doesn’t always feel like panic, sometimes it feels like “I’m fine” while your body quietly runs on emergency mode. We’re pulling the curtain back on how stress becomes normal, why it shows up in almost every wellness journey, and what to do when you’ve been coping for so long you can’t even tell you’re overloaded.

We talk about the hidden cost of a life with no downtime, how constant stimulation affects sleep and anxiety, and why busyness gets treated like a badge of honour. From there we get practical: the fight, flight and freeze responses (including the stuck, overwhelmed “freeze” that leads to avoidance), the ways we numb stress with scrolling, Netflix, alcohol or food, and how to protect your peace from the drip feed of stress-inducing media and algorithms.

You’ll hear the tools we keep coming back to with clients: writing down stressors, crossing off what you can’t control, creating a pause before you react, and using simple breathwork to shift the nervous system into rest and digest. We also explore how calm creates a ripple effect, especially when you’re supporting children through exam stress and performance pressure.

Plus, we’re inviting you into a genuinely simple experiment: our “Do Nothing” challenge in the free Far Too Fabulous Facebook group starting 11 May, building from one minute to 15 minutes of literal stillness. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a breather, and leave us a review so more women can find the support.

To download the tools mentioned click HERE.

To view Kate Winslet's advice click HERE.

Click HERE to support us.

Thank you for listening.

You can continue the conversation with us in the Far 2 Fabulous Facebook group. Come and connect with other women on a journey to empowered health. 

For more information about Julie Clark Nutrition, click HERE
For more information about Catherine Chapman, click HERE
 

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support the show, you can buy us a coffee HERE. Your support helps us continue creating episodes and improving our recording setup. 

We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Stress Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to Far Too Fabulous. Julie and Catherine join us on a mission to embrace your fabulousness and redefine wellness. Get ready for some spiciness, inspiration, candy chat, and humour as we journey together towards empowered wellbeing.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Far Too Fabulous Podcast. We're back together. Little blip in the scheduling last week.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Oh my god, life. Honestly, it's insane, isn't it? It is, yeah. It is difficult to fit everything in all the time. Which ties in quite nicely. That wasn't on purpose, but it does tie in quite nicely with what we're going to talk about today. No, it does.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

I mean, it's stress awareness month. Who knows? Is it? Yeah. Apparently so. I'm not sure I know what month it is, quite frankly. I think we should just have stress awareness year constantly. All the time. Yeah. So every like there's loads of different health days, aren't there? World health days for various things. And we came across came across the stress awareness month, and we thought we do talk about stress a lot, don't we?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, a lot. It comes up in in almost every single episode in one way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, and it comes up in every single client appointment I have. Does it come up with yours as well?

When Busy Becomes The Baseline

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's a real barrier. It's a real hindrance. And it's a bit of a um like invisible barrier, isn't it? Because people want to be doing all the time, and and that's then causes a causes a stress.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

And I don't think that people realise, do people realise quite how dangerous it is? I think a lot of people do actually know that stress is a is a cause, a major cause of many of the diseases that we want to avoid. But I think people, I think we've normalized stress. Yeah, you're right. And I think that people don't necessarily fully, I don't know if they're fully aware of how stressed they are. I tell you how I know this for sure is when I do the testing.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

And they will say, Yeah, I'm quite busy, I have a lot going on, but I'm quite calm, I don't really react to stress too bad, I'm pretty good. And then we see what's happening inside their body, yeah, and their body is going major, major stress.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Because they've just got used to running at that level for so long that they don't even know that that is stressed anymore.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, and I think people just think that stress means that emotional side, yeah, but it's not just that, it's also I've mentioned before about if you're dehydrated, that's a stress on the body. Yeah. But the emotional side is huge as well because, like you were talking in your episode last week about the constant drip feed of negative, stress-inducing news all the time. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

And everything, and it's so busy, like our lives are so busy, there is no let up. Um, and we'll actually that we'll come on to that a little bit later about let up, but it is just constant, and there's in our society, particularly, there's a badge of honour to that, isn't there? Like, you know, even when you're like when your kids are younger, that you've got to be doing all the time, they've got to go to all of the clubs, and they've got to go to you know, everything. And if they're doing nothing, I don't know about you, like through the summer holidays, if they're doing nothing, I felt guilty.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

They don't know how to be bored anymore. We were definitely bored when we were kids at times, and then we had to be creative in order to not be bored. Yeah, and today's kids don't have that, do they? No, they've got constant their their attention span is so short as well with things like uh social media, etc. And that just on demand TV. I mean, the amount of times I've had a chat with my kids, and you probably do this as well, about back in the day, and and it's very easy for us, especially. I mean, I'm a little bit older than you as well. It's very easy to look back and think it was so perfect back then, but just having to be in the house at the time for your favourite TV programme, yeah, because you couldn't record it, no, you couldn't watch it back on the iPlayer or something, and then you had to wait a whole week for the next episode, even if it ended on a cliffhanger.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, yeah. You just had to wait, didn't you? No, absolutely, and that's it's really important to like build that resistance and that holding of things off. It's it is a really important skill, and I think that social media and and things like Netflix and stuff have definitely played a part, but I think as as parents, there was a there was a pressure to have them entertained and skilled and all this stuff, like more and more and more and more and more. Whereas we should have just probably yeah, left them more to their own devices so they could m make up their own games and now they're just not capable of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah. I mean, you don't even have that like when you're waiting for a bus. When have I ever waited for a bus? But you know, if you're waiting for something or you're in a doctor's waiting room or anything now where you're waiting, you have your phone to distract you, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

There's never any downtime. You're so right. Oh my god, yeah, waiting for a bus was as boring as hell. You just stare at where you knew the bus. Even I even used to look at where the reflection, I knew the reflection was going to be to see if the bus was coming around the corner. You're absolutely right. And I mean we didn't I didn't take a book up to the bus stop and sit there and read a book or anything. We yeah, had to be have to be entertained all of the time. There's no downtime whatsoever. And I think then this will have a knock-on effect for our sleep, and I think I mentioned this last week as well. Is that you think, oh well, we have our our sleepers are downtime, but our brains must be so busy, so bloody tired at that point. There's no way that you'll be able to, you're so out of practice at dropping down into that deep relaxation, you're just sort of skimming the surface all the time.

No Downtime Means Worse Sleep

SPEAKER_00 6:47

And this this plays into like anxieties and things, especially with younger people when they haven't got that constant entertainment, and there is that even a brief moment of just nothing, it freaks them out completely.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, no, absolutely. We're not massive fans of change as human beings, and that's their normal. So, and that's I'm saying their normal, that's our normal, that's everyone's normal now. And yeah, we're really out of practice at doing bugger all, and it's and it's frowned upon, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

The guilt that you get from doing bugger all. We said that before on an episode about if you're even if you're sat watching TV, which isn't doing nothing, but if you're watching TV in the middle of the day and then your other half comes in, yeah, you do that thing where I'm just getting up, or I've just sat down for a minute, or you make excuses for just being sat there. It's ridiculous, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Yeah, really interesting. So, bringing us back to stress awareness month, what I love about this campaign is that their kind of hashtag mantra for this year is be the change, and it's based very much on personal control about here's our favourite thing awareness, yeah, personal responsibility because then you are in control, and a lot of the time when you're stressed, it's an out-of-control, overwhelming feeling, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, yeah, so it's about being aware and bringing it back in, and I think that again we forget that our body doesn't it hasn't caught up with the times, so it responds in exactly the way it would have done thousands of years ago, and it's only trying to do its best and help, but we just have this low-grade constant inflammation, don't we? Because of the body thinking, oh, I might potentially get injured any moment, so I've got to make sure that my blood's a little bit stickier, or I've got to push my blood pressure up a bit because of what it's trying to cause.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

I think I've got a I've got to run any minute because this scary ass email has caused, you know, the heart to pump and the the blood pressure to rise.

Fight Flight Freeze And Overwhelm

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah, and some there's that fight, fight, flight, and freeze, and sometimes we forget about that freeze element. And I was really interested because I was listening to a podcast the other day, and the person was talking about she's in her 40s and she'd taken up jujitsu. And I've that that triggered my interest because of having taken up karate, and she was talking about the sparring element of being in martial arts that she didn't like, and I don't like it. So I like all the catters and the movements and learning the skills, but when I've when I've got to fight someone, I don't like it. Fair enough. Yeah, yeah. But what was interesting is that she said that she realized that she couldn't fight because she was in freeze. She had so much going on in her life that actually she needed to run or freeze in that situation, and it wasn't until she'd addressed her nervous system and her stress that she felt able to fight. So that's another thing that can happen is that you get you can't make a decision, yeah, you get stuck, yeah, and that's because you're in that freeze, or you just want to avoid. So run away, avoid, ignore. It's the fight that you almost want to get back to be able to get through this overwhelm.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yeah, yeah, and get yeah, and get the things done that are overwhelming you, but you can't because you're in freeze.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

I'm not obviously talking about physically going and punching someone or being aggressive. No, we we we'd never encourage that. No, but just being able to be proactive and face things rather than the runaway or the bury my head in the sand or whatever it is, and it was really interesting conversations. So I've been looking at that myself to see if my avoidance of the sparring element is connected with my nervous system, with just overwhelm of everything in in life.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

So interesting. And I mean, that's a really interesting conversation for within the rise of like the diagnosis of ADHD and things like that, because that I think that's one of the traits, isn't it? That you're that so you're very overwhelmed with everything and you can't kind of like we talk about decluttering and things like that, you can't kind of get through things because it's just too much, so you so you don't do anything.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Yeah, exactly. You don't do anything, so it is interesting, and you can really you could we could go right down the rabbit hole on various yeah, of oh yeah, of all of them.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, but also but the interesting thing is you when I say you don't do anything, it that isn't true. You don't do the things that are going to get you out of overwhelm, you go and do some other random shit that's not gonna help you at all. You go and scroll, you go and watch Netflix, you go and drink a glass of wine, you go and eat some sort of junk food because you just you're like I could need something, yeah. Um, and it's and then you're completely you're constantly kicking the can down the road.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah, I mean that with something like alcohol, for example, that is such an easy way to sedate yourself against what's going on, and food will be the same, watching Netflix is the same, scrolling is the same, it is avoiding the true situation on what's going on, or just finding an alternative.

Numbing Out With Scrolling And Wine

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah, but you know, don't you, like deep in your body there is still that stress going on because it hasn't gone away, you're just yeah, you're just trying to numb yourself from it.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

And then I find it really fascinating with stress that two people could experience the same stressor, yeah, but how they react could be very different. So this is where it's quite a complicated thing, isn't it? Because it's not like you can say, Oh, just do X, Y, and Z and you'll be fine. Yeah, it's very much how you and and it's almost a choice as well. Yeah. I mean, we're not talking about major stress, but we're talking about everyday ongoing stress. I always remember having that client, and I'm sure I've spoken about it before, who was really stressed with their commute to London. Back in the day where it was the old style trains where I used to commute to London, and because I'm small, the seats would fit two and a half people. So because I'm small, I would always end up with the big person next to me, and I'd be squished, and that used to bug me a bit. But this person was in the same situation where that commute to London was they would be aware of the noises people made, if they were eating, if that they were being squashed, and all of this kind of stuff. And then they bought, because we needed to address this because this was every day, they bought a mini disc player. That's how old this is, a mini disc player. They never took off, did they? Mini disc player and reframed how they dealt with that stress. So they listened to something calming whilst they were on that train journey so that they weren't aware of all those things, and it's that is just literally changing how you're responding to a situation, isn't it? So interesting, is it?

Protect Your Peace From Noise

SPEAKER_01 14:29

And the fact that you've given them the distraction, what was the what was the thinking behind being involved in what everybody else was doing in that train, like worrying about maybe the smells or the the sounds or the rather than sort of rather than being introspective there, and that I think that's a huge thing, isn't it? And I I might have touched on this actually last week as well, is is that outward looking, like getting involved in all sorts of things that are literally none of your business. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Like you don't need, you've got enough going on, you don't need to get involved in that argument on Facebook, you don't need to have an opinion on I don't know, something the other side of the world just because it's been shown on your television. Um, and we've got the ability to do that now with all the media and stuff, but we don't need to like wind your neck in. Yeah, look after yourself, don't get involved in all of that stuff. Um, just yeah, protect your protect your peace.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah, one of the things I noticed is that I'm quite an empathetic person. Yeah, and I could watch stuff on social media about terrible situations that had happened to someone. Like I'd see, in fact, I've turned off looking at a lot of this stuff because you know, social media now it doesn't just show you the people that you follow and the things that you like anymore, it's got all these suggestions for you, so advert suggestions for you, and it will come up with something, and it will be some horrible thing that's happened, and I get caught up in it, and then half the time I end up crying, yeah, and then I think why have I done that to myself? I don't know these people, and it's not saying that I want to cut off my emotions, but did that do me any favours? No, can you help them?

Take Control With Simple Lists

SPEAKER_01 16:28

No, no, absolutely not. But I mean, that's not your fault because that is the algorithms putting that in front of you. Mark sent me something yesterday about teenagers and social media and the stuff that is that is constantly put in front of them because they will click it because it's after your time. Um, yeah, so just being fiercely, fiercely protective of your peace and your time. It's yeah, it's so so important. Yeah, so I I so it's being aware of these things and then taking personal control. Now I know that you are a fixer a little bit like me. If there's a problem, yeah, you want to fix it. If somebody else has got a problem, oh, we know the solutions, we know the steps they need to take. We bloody well do. However, it's not very helpful for us just telling people to do it. They there needs to be an element of control for themselves and an element of discovery for themselves, and this is the stress awareness months part of their campaign is to is to take personal control so rather than somebody else taking over and doing it for you, it you have ownership over it.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Yeah, and I think there are like I've got clients to do this to write down all the things that stress them out and then cross off the ones they can't control. Yes. Like if you've got a sick parent that needs caring for, you can't control that. It is what it is. Cross them off, cross that off, send them off to Switzerland. Yeah, you can't control those things, so just like cross them off your list, and you'll end up with ones that you can control. And sometimes you need to stand up for yourself and have a conversation with someone or an organisation or something to say this is affecting me. Yeah, I need some help with reducing the amount of burden on me in this particular area. Sometimes it's it's having to make a really tough decision. It might be that you're in the wrong relationship or you're in the wrong job, or something like that is causing you stress and you know it. Um, but most of the time you'll end up with a list of things that you could actually deal with.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

You could actually deal with different when it's down on black and white as well, isn't it? It's the same with when you're making a list and you're like, oh my god, I'm so busy, I've got so much to do, and then you write it down and you go, Oh no, it wasn't actually as much as I thought it was, but it was just buzzing around my head. Yeah, that's really and I I imagine that if you've got things written down, even if it is like big hard decisions, the fact that you see it there written down make probably makes it much clearer. You're like, okay, I know I I know that that's stressing me. I actually know what I need to do to sort that out, and then when it's written down there in black and white, it makes it a bit more clear-cut, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Perhaps, yeah, and there'd be some things that they do stress you out, but you you almost need to laugh at them and go, do I really need to allow that to stress me out? Is there more important things going on in my life or in the world that do I really need to worry about that?

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, because there is an element of choice about this. Do I lose my head over something or do I choose another route? And that, I mean, that's really triggering for people when they're like somebody's like really emotionally involved in something. It's really hard to then take a step back and say, This is my choice. I'm making a choice to get really involved in this in one way, shape, or form. Take a step back. Is it is it doing me any favours? Is it stressing me out even more? Is there a better way I could do it?

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, that pause, when you have a pause before you react or before you take action. We've both done this with clients over self-sabotaging behaviour, haven't we? Where we've said, right, we've recognised that we're going in the in the kitchen in the evening looking for whatever we can find. Can we just put in a pause where we just say, hang a minute, what am I actually looking for here? Yeah, I'm looking for some stress release. Can I do this in a different way? Pausing is so important, and I think people forget.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Yeah.

Inspire Others And Change The Culture

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Unless, of course, it's a pause before you're going to do something you should be doing, then don't think about it. Go, go, go, don't let the brain kick in and come up with all the marvellous excuses, like rummaging through the kitchen to stop you from doing it. And then their second point is to be an inspiration to others. And again, this I think this links in with the whole thing about society almost giving you a badge of honour for being stressed. I'm so busy. How are you? Oh my god, I'm really busy. Yeah, me too, okay. And then you carry on along your way. Imagine somebody, if they said, I'm really chilled out, thanks. I've got nothing to do all day, and they'll be like, huh?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Yeah, because a lot of the time, if you see, especially if you bump into someone you haven't seen for a while and they say, Oh, how are you doing? You say, Oh yeah, I'm fine, I'm really busy, and they go, Oh, that's great. Yeah. You think why is that crying? Why is that really busy?

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, no, you don't understand. I'm literally thinking. Well done. Excellent work. Yes. So be the be the change. So inspire other people, especially I I think, I think women are shockers at this, at being. It's like a double busy. Be the change. Be the person that says, I've looked after myself today, I've had a cup of tea, I've sat in the garden and I've looked at a bee on a flower, and um, and I might go out for a walk and champion this this way of life. We need to it can't keep going at the speed it's going now. We have to drag it back, otherwise we're gonna be just sicker and sicker and sicker.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah, and we do like being around calmer people, don't we? We do notice when we're around calmer people, or even if you go into somebody's house, you can feel whether there's stress or not, can't you?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's yeah, you feed off of that. And it yeah, you feed off either whether they're calm or whether they're stressed. So yeah, be the be the calm person and and allow that to uh filter out into the world.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

I love a a ripple effect when you do something and then the ripple effect continues, continues. And I like the the health challenge that the stress awareness month has put together, yeah that really does, I think, incorporate that ripple effect by some of the things, and we'll speak about that in a moment. I like I like that, but yeah, inspire others, and then there's an improvement. I there was a say, I think it was one of the oh, like one of the famous Buddhas or something had said about if we taught everyone in the world to meditate, there wouldn't be any war.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Yeah, that is probably from the word go.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yeah, that's probably very true, isn't it? So when you be the change, it has an effect on someone else, it has an effect on someone else, and then yeah, I like that idea, it's nice.

Breathwork That Switches Off Stress

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so you were talking about the tools that they had uh released as part of this um awareness month, and so there are loads of things like we were talking about doing nothing, but obviously there are tools that we can use to help as long as you then don't turn that into a mission.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

Yeah, this is the this is the danger, isn't it? But I think the biggest most impactful tool that we've got is our breath. Yeah, it is so easy to do, it doesn't take any time, it's free, and the knock-on effect right throughout the body is so significant. It's yeah, I was listening to is it James Nestor, who's the yeah, I was listening to him again recently because he's updated his book Breath, which is an absolutely amazing book, and he was talking that's 10 years old, that book now, and he's updated it, but he goes into it in a lot of detail about the impact. But the simple, the simple situation here is that if you adjust your breath, you move from fight, flight, and freeze into rest and digest, yeah, and it immediately switches off that stress response. So if you keep doing that mindfully throughout the day at just individual points, or when you feel yourself getting stressed or something's happening, yeah, it sends an instruction back to the body that that's actually a better way to be.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

And then it becomes uh a habit. A habit.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And some of the other little things that they've they've so they've they've given out this 30-day health challenge. So we'll link the yeah, let's link put the link in. We'll link it in the show notes so you can uh so you can download it. Um, but some of the they're just so simple, but don't be fooled by their simplicity. Compliment a friend was one of them. Or wasn't it like hold a door open for somebody? So just being mindful, I guess, is probably the the theme of lots of these things.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah, let someone out when you're driving, but when they don't when they don't say thank you, just go, well, they must be having a bad day. Yeah, they can't even say thank you rather than going, Well, don't embarrass me with your thanks, that kind of thing, you know. Yes, yes, or yeah, very sarcastically at the window going, You're welcome. Those kind of things are all little mini stresses, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Yeah, that's that's so right. I do often actually when I am driving, if if somebody is rude or at my bumper or something in that, I do often think I I don't know what's going on in that car.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Um, so I will, you know, I'll give you a I'll give you a free pass. Apart from, apart from, apart from that rounds about on the way back from Canterbury, when you're supposed to go into the right lane to go straight across past premiere inn and then go into the left lane and then they come and cut you up. And uh, and the the silly thing is I watch them, I know they're going to do it. Yeah, and then I then I almost revel in getting annoyed with them.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

It is funny, and it's completely unnecessary, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

That what you've done in internally to yourself is that I know they're not gonna crash into me because I'm watching them and I know they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it wrong. I know was I doing it right.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, that's all you I showed my daughter the other day that Kate Winslit little video that she when she was recording with Fern Cotton on Happy Place and she said it was so it was so good. Have you seen it or not? Right. So she said, Look, Fern, she was properly like, right, you cannot dictate or control or influence anybody's opinion of you. You can't please everyone, some people won't like how you look, the sound of your voice, that you've done better than them, or whatever it is. And she did this whole speech and I showed it to my daughter the other day, and I just thought that is so true. Like when we're in that situation and we let that person have that pass, all you can do, she says, all you can do is turn up every day, do your best, be um true to your values, be kind, and know that you've done that, and then it doesn't matter what anybody says, you know in your heart that you've you couldn't have done any better. And so, in that situation, yeah, when you get that moment of where you said, I don't know what's happen what's going on for that person, why they're acting like that, you've given them a free pass. That is you being kind, being true to your values, and and not reacting to what someone else is doing. It's so powerful, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 29:07

So hard to do though, yeah, and it's for you, it's not for them. Like you don't know them, you don't know what they're doing. They probably they're probably just driving like an idiot. But probably, yeah, but it's for you, it's not for them. It's yeah, it's brilliant. I think we could do a whole whole podcast on everything that you've just said there. I think maybe uh Kate Winslet podcast coming up, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

It is just look it up on uh I think it's on YouTube if you look up. We'll stick it in the Kate Winslett extra stick it in the Facebook group, and I made my daughter watch it three times. I'm like, you need to understand this, yeah, because she's someone that worries about what other people say or think or can't remember. We were talking about something that she said, I can't do that, because then everybody would look at me. And I said, So what? What it doesn't matter if they look at you, oh my god, mummy, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Connection That Helps People Open Up

SPEAKER_01 30:00

No, there is a it there's a whole podcast on just like self-confidence and self-belief as well, isn't there? Yeah, absolutely. Um, and so the other thing that I liked about this 30-day challenge that you can download from the Stress Awareness Month organizers is that there's lots about connection in here.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

There's lots about there's social interactions going on throughout it, aren't there? And it's so important, and we know that loneliness is a major killer.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Major, major killer, and yeah, just keeping everything to yourself is so stressful. The minute that you like we were talking about writing it down, but the minute that you say these things out loud, they lose their power over you, and you just yeah, it's like a problem shared is a problem halved, and it's so true, yeah, it's so true, and also when you're sharing these things with somebody else, do you know what you're doing? You're giving them permission to feel like that too, because you're not alone, you're not the only one that feels like that. The other person you're talking to is going, oh my god, me too. Do you know what I mean? And you're saying it out loud, it gives somebody else permission to say it out loud and stop pretending that everything is like Instagram perfect.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Yeah, I was listening to the radio the other day. This is gonna be, I'm going off on a tangent. No, it's good, but it's connected. So the they were talking to two guys that have founded this um, I guess you call it a movement called Pints and Ponytails. Interesting. I don't know if you've uh didn't see this coming. No, it's sit down, everyone. So anyway, it was basically for it was an it was um getting new dads or dads that are on their own, like either they'd split up from their partners and they're getting their their kids on alternative weekends, or their partner had passed away, or something like that, or just new dads struggling with being a new dad, and they did this thing about dads connecting with their daughters with doing their hair, yeah. So they showed them how to do ponytails. But the reason why I'm saying this in the pub with a pine, although they did use non-alcoholic beer, which I thought was very interesting as well. But what they said is that they have the guys sat next to each other, so they have their like their girls weld, um, so they can do the hair, but they have like two of them sat next to each other, and because they're focused on the hair and they're next to each other, that they opened up more. Interesting, they couldn't open up if they were looking at each other, and then that fed into their relationship with their children because their their child was sitting away from them, like they were behind them doing their hair, yeah, and they would notice that they would have more conversations and open up more as well, and it had led to this with these dads it having a breakthrough with all manner of mental health issues. It's really interesting. Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

But I I find that when I'm in the car, if I'm in the car with any of the kids, you're facing straightforward that there'll be a conversation started up because you're not facing each other, or when you're walking, same sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Yeah, yeah, because it's quite intense when you're looking at someone if you want to start to open up about problems, yeah. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

So perhaps that's for somebody maybe that wants to help a friend but doesn't want to take over, perhaps that's a let's go for a walk. I mean, I'm not suggesting you do their hair, but I mean you could do maybe maybe they'd like that. Perhaps you could get one of those head massager things, they look good. Um, and you could go for yeah, go for a walk, go for a drive, and just sit and listen without like if you're going for a coffee and you're just staring at each other over a table, it might be harder for them to open up.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Love that. Yeah, and a tangent, but kind of connected. No, that was that was perfectly connected. My mum did that the other day. And she just punts and ponytails.

Morning And Night Habits That Settle

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Neither of those, definitely. She she went on a complete tangent, told us this whole story, and and at the end she hadn't told me what the link was. So I'm sat there going, why did you just tell me this? It seemed like really random entire story, and I think there was a link. She went, Oh, dear. I was like, Okay, but you didn't say that. She I think she has conversations in her head before she has conversations with me out loud. I think that's how it works, but doesn't tell me what the link is. Um, so small actions. We've talked about breath, just having those lovely long, deep breaths. And I mean, you don't have to be fancy about this, you don't have to know how to do breath work. However, if you wanted to sort of go a little bit deeper into it, I did take you through some breath uh in the last episode, making sure that that exhale is a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

That's the key, isn't it? The exhale to be longer and you must breathe in through your nose. It doesn't matter if you breathe out through your mouth or your nose, you've got to breathe in through your nose. Just there's a bit of control in through it and a longer outbreak.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Yeah. And it just signals to your body that you are that you're safe, which is which is all it wants, really. I mean, that's the only reason that any of this is is happening, is because it feels unsafe. It feels that there is like imminent danger going on around. Um, and you said doing this regularly into and making it into a small habit, but what other small habits could you sort of add into your life? It's we don't want these big grand gestures that are again overwhelming, we want just little bits and pieces to to add into your life.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Yeah, I think the the biggest simplest thing that you can do to help, apart from the breath, because that's so I think just foundational. Yeah, stress 101, number one, is breathe and address that. But how you start your morning, yeah, and it doesn't mean that you have to have some complicated morning routine, no, but not being woken up by some loud buzzer right next to you, yeah, is that's a stress.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Oh my god. Kitty burst into my bedroom on Monday morning. She's got exams, of course. And we were we're gonna touch on exams, weren't we, at one point, through this this. Um, and so she was up early and I had like five minutes left, but she burst into my room and I thought I'd overslept, and I kind of bolt sat bolt upright. My heart was absolutely pounding, and it takes ages to recover. And actually, the other daughter did that to me at three o'clock in the morning. Oh god. The other morning, and I had my I knew that she was out, so I had my phone next to me. I'm very grateful I have my phone next to me because I'd have been beyond worried if I'd come downstairs and found phone calls at three o'clock in the morning, and that I hadn't I hadn't heard. But I knew that she was out, yeah. So she rang me at three o'clock in the morning, and of course you wake up with your heart in your mouth, don't you? Yeah, she was in Tottenham Court Road. How did I think she was gonna get home? Oh um, I don't know, Anya. I'm in bed. You've you've got to sort this out for yourself. They got an Uber, they were fine, but for for some reason she decided, sat on the side Tottenham Court Road, that I was gonna be help able to help her get home. Oh dear, yeah. So again, heart, absolutely pounding. I thankfully went back to sleep. Mark, however, did not.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

No, no, it's very hard when you get a shock like that to get settled back down again because again, your body thinks it needs to be hyper-vigilant and on alert now. Yeah, well, it thinks I probably needs to jump in the car and drive to central London, which Mark did think I was going to do at some point, but I didn't do that. But yeah, how you start your morning, obviously don't have your child come rushing in and nice and gently. That might happen, but just that, and we're just talking about those first five minutes. Just don't pick up your phone and let last time I said to you about letting everybody into your room, that's what happens when you switch your look at your phone uh as soon as you've got up. It's just take a moment, yeah, and then again when you go to bed. Yeah, that is so powerful, I think. How you start your day, how you end your day. If you've got lots of things that you're worrying about, just write them in a book and put them away, or you can imagine that you put them into a filing cabinet and shut the drawer, can't you? And things like that. There's things that you can do for that.

Exam Stress And Being The Calm Adult

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean, these are I think everything we talk about, all the simple habits that we we speak about almost every single week, are the habits that will combat your stress, are the habits that will make your health better and in turn help you deal with that stress. So there are, yeah, through this, so many, so many little habits that they can do. But I think this is probably well timed as well, because we would like I mentioned about exams and they're all coming up. And do you think do you think stress for exams has got higher as well? There's definitely a lot of emphasis on academia doing well.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Yeah, and they put pressure on them from primary school now, don't they? Getting through their SATs and all of that, and then into school. They'd start talking GTSEs really early now, and and even the amount of papers that they do for a subject now, there seems to be a lot, and yeah, a lot of pressure, I think, that is unnecessary. I don't think I don't think that I felt that pressure.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

I think I was fairly oblivious as a child, quite frankly. But I suppose also it's that compound effect, isn't it? Because if they're already living with that low-level stress from like social media, like all the time, not necessarily that they've got a stressful life, but there's just it's just busy, there's a lot that they're doing, and then the stress of achieving and and how scary an exam is or something, and this stuff just keeps building and keep building. Whereas I don't think that we had that amount of stuff going on in our lives, so that when we were taking exams and it was stressful, it was just that, it wasn't everything else as well. Yeah, I mean that well, I mean, there was pressures, there was definitely social pressures about how you looked and how you behaved and things like that, but it wasn't 24 hours a day as well, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

No, absolutely, yeah. So I think with children, again, if you are someone that's stressed and you've got children that are doing exams, by you being calm and addressing your stress has a knock on effect to them, and then the simple things that we've said about teaching kids how to breathe is important, and then being mindful of what they're doing before they go to bed and when they wake up.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah, absolutely. That really plays into that inspiration to others for the awareness campaign as well.

The Facebook Do Nothing Challenge

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Yeah, there's a really good toolkit on again. We put that in the show notes for this particular campaign for students, so it it could be helpful, I think.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Yeah. So we thought that we'd get a bit practical with this. Yeah, let's get practical. Let's get let's get practical.

unknown 41:52

Practical.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

You can put leotards on if you like. Um, we thought we would run a challenge in our Facebook group starting on the 11th of May.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Yeah, so we really want to address this stress situation, and one of the things that we know helps is to actually do nothing. Do nothing. Do nothing. We're gonna do a challenge where you do nothing. It's a do nothing challenge, yeah, and it sounds ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? It sounds really funny saying it out loud. But I was talking to you about if I get ill, a lot of the time I get ill because it's my body's way of saying, uh, you're not listening to me, you're doing too much, you haven't stopped and done nothing, so I'll make you ill so that you do nothing. Yeah, literally does that to me. And I was thinking to myself, I do a lot, you do a lot. We are people that do a lot, and that's just how we are. And I don't want to not do a lot, but I'm also mindful of the fact that when was the last time I did nothing? And I had to do this in a previous um quite a few years ago now when I was in a coaching program, and we were looking at how the brain works, etc. And I had to do that exercise of doing nothing for four hours, and I literally threw my toys out of the pram about it, and was told that I needed out of the whole group that I need to do more than four hours because yeah, and they were right, and that was the thing that they were right, and I've and I've done that exercise a few times, and it is so incredibly uh what's the word I'm looking for? Enlightening. Oh my god, it's just what happens when you do nothing is that you get a chance to understand what really is going on in your own head, and at the same time, the impact on your nervous system, how you feel, is so significant, you will notice it. Now we're not gonna suggest that you do four hours of nothing, no, because that's quite hard, but we are gonna work up on a daily basis from a minute over the week to achieve doing nothing for 15 minutes or more and see how you feel. Yeah, and we're gonna do it together.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Research says that we achieve more together, and if you want to bring some people, so again, if you want to be the change you want to see in everybody else. Bring some other people into the Facebook group and uh yeah, we're gonna have a bit have a bit of fun with it. Yeah, definitely, and just grow those moments in our day where we are doing nothing, and she means literally nothing. We can have a drink of water, no food, no tidying up in the room, no phone, yeah, no, no notebook, no not nothing.

SPEAKER_00 44:45

You just literally sit and look out the window and just sit with your own thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Yeah, it's so powerful, but and I think that's the thing, is it? Nobody wants to sit with their thoughts, but we won't dig into that because that's another podcast as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Yeah, exactly. So we really look forward to running that challenge in the far too fabulous Facebook group. So if you're in there, then you'll see us doing that challenge. If you're not, you need to be in there. Come on in. The price is right.

Subscribe Share And Join Us

SPEAKER_01 45:16

No, fantastic. So uh yeah, have a look at download the sheet, we'll put that into the show notes and let's just work on reducing the stress in our own lives and then watch that lovely knock-on ripple effect for everybody else around us. Yeah, absolutely. Right, see you next time. See ya then. Thank you so much for joining us today. We love creating this for you. We'll be back next week with another great episode.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Until then, we'd be beyond grateful if you'd subscribe to the podcast and leave us a glowing review. If you've already done this, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Please do share the podcast with friends and family. You never know which tiny piece of information could be life-changing for someone you care about.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

We absolutely love hearing from you. So connect, comment, or message us on our social media channels.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

You'll find all the links in the show notes and if you haven't already, come and join us in our free Facebook group where we continue the conversation and you get to connect with like minded women. We'd love to welcome you in. Until next time, stay fabulous!