What is the first thing to do when stress has hold of you? Be quiet. Not deep breathing, not affirmations. Stop talking, and let the body come down a gear.
What is the first thing to do when stress has hold of you? Be quiet. Not deep breathing, not affirmations. Stop talking, and let the body come down a gear.
The damage is not the stress itself, it is the mechanism staying switched on for hours at a stretch. I am a city councillor, which qualifies me on stress. Picture the body going from a run to a walk to sitting to lying down. All you are doing is slowing it. So first, be quiet. Everything else works better after that.
One thing to try: Next time it grips, say nothing for ten seconds. That is step one and it is most of it.
In this episode
(0:04) Reducing suffering through the difficult times
(2:36) Being on the city council, which qualifies me for stress
(4:57) The mechanism staying alive for hours on end
(7:38) Taking control of it rather than it controlling you
(9:50) Number one. Be quiet. Somebody is in your face, so stop
(12:06) Run, to walk, to sitting, to lying down
(14:24) Why the obvious answer is not the answer
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What do you actually do first when stress has hold of you?
Be quiet. Not deep breathing, not affirmations, not a technique. Stop talking, and let everything come down a gear from there.
The heart of it
Stress is not the enemy. It is the thing that yanks you back from the kerb.
The damage is not the stress. It is the mechanism staying switched on for hours at a time.
You are not getting rid of it. You are turning the volume down.
We built this system for the moment something looks at you and decides you are lunch. It is superb at that. What it was never built for is running all afternoon because the traffic is slow and your tea was wrong.
I asked my stepdad about this once. He drives lorries and he gets furious behind a slow bus. I said, what if you were not stressed about it? He said they should drive quicker and it is making him late. And I said, you are still behind the bus.
Most of us half believe that being stressed counts as doing something. It does not. It accomplishes nothing beyond the thirty seconds it was designed for.
So, three steps, in order.
Be quiet. Shut up. Drop your shoulders, take your head back out of attack position.
A man came into my house years ago shouting at me to move a van, with six builders standing around watching. I asked him to explain why, said I would happily move it, and then I just went quiet. He carried on and eventually walked out. One of the builders asked how I did that. I did not have an answer. I just had nothing to say.
Be still. That is different. Quiet is your mouth. Still is slowing the flywheel down. Picture the body going from a run, to a walk, to sitting, to lying down.
Be open. You are stressed, and that is all right. You are usually stressed because you care about something, and the moment it feels listened to, it settles.
And a bonus, which is really an extension of the third. Be curious. Hello stress. Why are you here? Where are you in my body? Is this the same one as last week?
One small thing to try
Next time it rises, run the three in order and do not skip to the end.
Quiet. Still. Open.
At first you will take it from a hundred and ten down to a hundred, and then have to work on the next ten. With practice the same three take it to thirty in one go, and thirty is a number you can do something with.
Questions people ask
Should I be trying to get rid of stress entirely?
No, and I said reduce rather than banish on purpose. Removing it altogether would mean not caring about anything, and you do not want that either.
Why is being quiet the first step?
Because everything you say in the first ten seconds makes it worse, and because the body cannot come down while the mouth is still going. Everything else works better once you have stopped.
Is my stress justified?
Not my call and not the point. Even when it is entirely justified, turning the volume down is what lets you deal with the thing rather than just broadcast about it.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
stress · breath · mindfulness
Read the transcript
Welcome to Stillness in the Storms.
I'm Stephen Webb, your host.
This is the podcast that helps you to reduce your suffering through
difficult times.
And on this week's podcast, we're talking about my three steps
to reduce stress virtually instantly.
And I will share them with you near the end of the podcast.
Before that, if you can leave a review or if you click follow on
this podcast or share it out, that'd be brilliant.
I'm trying to build up some listeners and I'm trying to get to
my 5k downloads.
That would be awesome if you could help me do that.
So.
Right.
How do we reduce stress?
Well, first of all, let's understand stress a little bit.
Let's understand.
And you know, people often look at me and they go, well, you
don't get stressed, Stephen.
I really do.
I suffer from stress quite a bit.
It's, you know, it's not something that is unfamiliar to me
and I come from a family of stressors and most of my family are
still stressors now.
And also being paralyzed just below my neck or just above my nipples.
And I never know how to explain that.
It's not quite just below my neck because I got my arms a little
bit, but my hands are paralyzed and I, I can feel my nipples
slightly.
Why am I sharing this with you on a podcast?
It's in there now, you know, you now know I can feel my nipples
a little bit.
Well, there you go.
You weren't expecting that, were you?
But anyway, right, let's bring it back, let's bring it back.
Let's, let's bring the tone back under to some kind of control
here.
Where was I?
Yeah, I have 24 hour carers and you know, most of the time they
cannot even make toast for me properly or at least the way I want
it.
You know, I get a piece of toast and I'm like, what's that?
And they'll go taste.
I'm like, no, that's like warm bread with some butter on it.
And then they'll bring down a piece of toast and it's dried up
and it was buttered like two days after it come out of the toaster.
So yeah, I, I know what stress is.
Like, I, I, I get it.
You know, they gotta shower me, they gotta do like the most intimate
things and all that.
In my personal care, I know what stresses, you know, I have my
fair share of it, but I've learned to deal with it.
I've learned to.
And plus, I'm on the city council, I'm a politician.
You Know if that doesn't qualify for someone that has some
kind of stress.
But anyway, right, let's go back to.
First of all, there's a few things I want you to know about stress,
and that is, you know, stress is not your enemy.
We often think we have to get rid of it.
We have to get rid of any kind of stress, get rid of any kind of
anxiety or any of those things that give us an adverse effect.
And we don't.
You know, it evolved to protect us.
It saves our life.
You know, this stress mechanism, this anxiety mechanism
that comes up, it's that same friend that pulls us back when we're
just about to step in front of a car.
It's giving us information.
It's telling us that, hey, look, I think something's wrong.
You need to take notice.
So stress is not the enemy.
It's not about getting rid of stress.
That's the first.
And if you only take that away from this podcast.
Stress is not the enemy.
You don't have to get rid of it completely.
We just have to soften it.
We have to quiet it down a little bit, and we have to listen
and understand it.
Hopefully that makes a little bit of sense.
Not easy to do.
Don't get me wrong.
When other people are like.
We feel other people are causing our stress, it's really not
that easy to do.
I know.
Okay, if stress is a friend, how come it kills so many people?
How come it's so dangerous for us?
Well, it's not the stress is the problem.
It's that prolonged stress is the problem.
It's that.
It's the fact that we get stressed, like as if we're in the
middle of.
And we use this example all the time.
A saber tooth tiger.
500,000 years ago, you're in a forest and suddenly you look up and
this saber tooth tiger's looking at you and you know that
it thinks you're lunch.
Well, that stress mechanism is going to save your life.
It's going to do all the things your body needs to hopefully
survive the next five, 10 minutes, when you need to get the
hell out of there or you need to freeze and fight, things like
that.
But the problem is, it's when we're.
When we're feeding that stressed mechanism, when it's alive
and alert in our bodies for hours and hours and hours on end,
it builds up the chemicals in our body that our body was not designed
to have it for hours on end.
And that lies the problem.
That there is the problem.
So.
So stress is a is a friend, it will save your life.
B, we just need to make sure that it's not there all the time.
It's really over sensitive now, it's missing.
You're misinterpreted in the messages.
You know, we, we get stressed if our tea isn't right or if we're
two minutes late or we're stuck in traffic when most of these
things there's nothing we can do.
You know, I had a discussion with my stepdad at some point and
I said to him, and this is when I first started studying all
these like to reduce my stress and all that.
And I said to him, he's a lorry driver.
And I said to him, well you get really stressed if you're following
a really slow bus or something or a slow car.
And he goes yeah, bloody right.
And I said yeah, but what if you just lowered that stress and
thought well I'm still behind the car or bus or something anyway.
And he goes yeah, but it's making you bloody late in it and
they should drive quicker.
And I'm like, well you can think all those things but you're
still behind it.
Nothing's going to change.
So you can either be stressed about it or just ah.
Or you can use my three steps to reduce stress instantly.
So most people almost feel like they need to be stressed in
order to be doing something that, that need to.
Well, if I'm sitting here stressed, that means I'm accomplishing
something where you're not really, you're just feeling stressed.
That's the reality of it.
You know, stress doesn't actually accomplish anything beyond
the initial saving your life.
If you're confronted with a saber tooth tiger, and I'm guessing
you're not very often confronted with a saber tooth tiger,
not in this day and age.
So how do we get rid of stress?
Well, you can't.
It's part of the body's mechanism, it's part of who you are.
Getting rid of stress is like trying to get rid of your heartbeat
or your thinking, your brain, your mind's designed to think, your
heart's designed to beat.
You're not going to get rid of the emotions know that have evolved
to help you in life.
But what we can do is we can take control over it and that's what
we want to do.
Instead of the stress overwhelming us and controlling us,
we want to reduce it.
So we're in control of the stress and we do that by softening
it, evening out, listening to it.
You know, stress is a autonomic Response system just the
same as your breathing.
Like I said, just the same as your heartbeat.
It's gonna happen anyway.
You know, you try stopping your breathing for too long, it's
gonna breathe.
You try completely getting rid of your stress mechanism, it's going
to manifest somewhere at some point.
There's nothing you can do about that.
So to recap then, at the beginning, I said I was gonna go
give you three, my three steps, and I will in just a moment.
But you know, stress is not the enemy.
You use it as your friend, start embracing it, and then you'll
take control of it a little more.
You cannot get rid of it.
No matter how much you try.
It's going to creep up on you at some point.
You're going to be in a situation where your bodily intuition,
which is beyond us and our subconscious mind is beyond us, is
going to protect you.
It's going to creep up and it's going to save you.
So you don't want to get rid of it entirely.
It's all about how long you spend stressed, how many hours of
the day if you're walking around.
I'm stressed, I'm stressed, I'm stressed.
Hour after hour.
The testosterone and the hormones and all that in your body,
you know, the extra glucose and the extra.
All the chemicals and things like that.
I forgot the names of them.
Now, the extra things that it produces are not good for you in
the long run.
That's all we need to know.
Right.
So it comes down to information, really.
And what information can you deem from feeling stressed?
So my three steps to reduce stress instantly.
Thank you for listening this long.
And they're really quite simple.
And number one, Shut up.
Be quiet.
Now you're in a stressful situation.
You're.
Somebody's in your face or something like that, you know, just
stop.
Be quiet.
Lower your shoulders, bring your head back a little bit.
You don't have to be in the position that you're attacking mode.
So just be quiet.
I remember a guy just up the end of the road.
He's passed away now, but a few.
About 15 years ago.
No, nearly 20 years ago.
Wow.
He was in my house screaming and shouting at me to move the van.
You need to get that van moved.
And I was.
I had about five or six guys around me because they were doing
building work in the house at the time.
And they were all looking at me and I said, look, just explain
to me why you need me to move the van and I'll move it quite happily.
And you know, I'm good with moving the van, but you just.
Can you explain to me why I need to move it?
You just need to.
And he was going on and on and on.
And in the end I just went quiet.
I just stayed there, you know, non confrontational.
And I just stay there.
Give me a.
Give me a good reason, otherwise we'll come and move it
when the work guys go home later in a couple of hours.
And in the end he walked down the house and the office said, how
did you deal with that?
I just said, I don't know.
But I just, I didn't have the words.
I was just quiet.
So number one, be quiet, shut up, stop talking.
Number two, be still.
And there is a difference between being quiet and be still.
You know, choir is, you know, I'm not talking, but the mind is
racing.
The mind might be getting angry and the stress is building
up inside and all that.
Everything that's happening inside.
Being still is, you know, being quiet is shutting your mouth.
Being still is just slowing the flywheel of the mind down, moving
from your head to your heart, moving to your body and just slowing
down.
So you can always imagine your body going from a run to a walk to
a sitting to eventually lying down.
It's just, just slowing down.
So first one, be quiet.
Second one, be still.
The third one, and this is really important one, is be open.
Be open to, you know, what's going on, what's happening right
now.
Be accepting of this current moment, I'm stressed.
And be okay with that.
Be okay.
We've been stressed because normally we're stressed because we
care.
We normally stress because there's a reason behind it.
And they're probably.
When we are open about it and when we're accepting about it, the
stress normally reduces because it's been listened to.
And that makes sense.
Then it's just like, okay, I can calm down because I've been listened
to.
And very often we want to sound off at somebody else.
And this three steps will stop that.
So be quiet, be still and be open.
And I got a bonus for you.
And it's kind of an extension of the be open.
Let's be curious, you know, be friendly curious with what your stress
is.
Hi stress, how are you feeling?
Why are you here?
Where are you two in my body?
What's the reason you're here?
Is it a strange same stress last week?
Is it the same ones the week before?
Is this something I need to listen to?
Just be curious within and you'll find out just the same as
anger, just the Same as grief and all the other feelings that we
deem as not very nice.
Inside, you'll find that you just care.
And that's the important part.
So when we shut up, when we go a little still, and when we open
up and then we're curious and you do those four things, and instantly
any stressful moment would just reduce.
Boom, just like that.
And it's not the fact that you're getting rid of it.
And it's really important I say my three steps to reduce stress,
not my three steps to get rid of stress, to banish it from your
life.
We want to get.
And you don't want to do that.
That's not the answer.
That.
That.
That won't serve you in any way.
In actual fact, you'll.
You'll probably become.
So.
I think it's nihilism or something.
I think that's a word where you just don't care about anything.
Not bothered.
You know, if you get angry and you get stressed, you care about
something deeply.
It's normally someone's.
We're feeling like someone's pushing our buttons the wrong way
or something like that.
But, you know, and that might be the case.
You know, I'm not here to.
I'm not here to discuss or say whether or not your stress is justified,
but I can say just turn the volume down on it.
And just being quiet, being still, being open.
And then as a bonus, be curious and do it as a process.
Don't do it all in one go.
The better you get at it, the quicker you can go through the process.
And instead of, like at a volume 110, when you're not so good
at it, we turn it down 10%.
10%, and then we've got to work on the next 10%.
Whereas when you get really good at it, you got a volume of 110
and it's boom, right down to like 30%, just like that.
And then it's manageable.
And then we could do something with it.
Sometimes we need to do something.
Sometimes we need to pick up the phone to the person and clear
up whatever we're stressed about.
Sometimes we need to deal with it.
So, yeah, I hope this podcast helps.
You know what?
Christmas just around the corner.
You could do me a massive favor.
As a gift.
You could share this podcast on social media.
You could leave a comment, you could leave a review.
If you're listening to.
On an iPhone or an iPad and on Spotify, you can subscribe.
And whatever platform you're doing it on, just do whatever it
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The more people listen to it, the more it's shared.
The more reviews, the more people it's going to help.
And this podcast is to reduce your suffering when the life is difficult
and everybody goes comes across difficult times, even, even
at Christmas, people have difficult times.
So take care guys.
Have an awesome week and I will see you next week.
