Stress Detox Challenge: Unwind Your Mind 🧘‍♀️✨⚡️

Inner Fire Series Week 7

Got soaked in a downpour, then rewarded with a spectacular sunset. Not a bad trade-off. And maybe a perfect metaphor for stress management.

Hey Uplifters!

How's that tension meter looking today? Zen garden calm? Mildly frazzled? Full-on dumpster fire?

Last week, we chatted about zapping energy vampires. This week, we're diving into stress detoxing. Because let's face it, sometimes life feels like we're juggling flaming chainsaws while riding a unicycle. On a tightrope. Over a pool of hungry sharks.

But fear not! Today, I’m sharing my go-to techniques that I practice in my own life almost daily - and that I’ve used with everyone from my kids when they could barely talk to my 94-year-old grandma. I hope you’ll give them a try and see what happens for you. Ready to become a calm-as-a-cucumber guru? Let's go!

Mindfulness Magic:

Mindfulness isn't just for yoga instructors and meditation masters. It's for anyone who's ever wanted to tell their brain to shut up for five seconds. Here's a quick trick to try:

The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique:

1. Name five things you can see

2. Four things you can touch

3. Three things you can hear

4. Two things you can smell

5. One thing you can taste

Boom! You're back in the present moment, my friend.

Relaxation Station:

Isn’t it funny how when someone says, “Relax,” the opposite happens? It even happens when we tell ourselves to “relax.” So, instead, try using tension to create more softness.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

1. Scrunch up your face like you just bit into a lemon. Hold for 5 seconds.

2. Release and feel the tension melt away.

3. Move down your body, tensing and relaxing each muscle group.

4. By the time you reach your toes, you'll be Jell-O in human form.

Coping Skills Toolkit:

Let's stock that stress-busting arsenal with some handy tools:

1. The "Nope" Note: Write down what's stressing you out, then dramatically rip it up.

2. Laughter Rx: Prescribe yourself 10 minutes of cat videos or your favorite comedy.

3. Dance It Out: Have a private dance party. Bonus points for ridiculous moves.

4. Green Therapy: Hug a tree. Talk to a plant. Become one with nature.

5. Worry Time: Schedule 15 minutes to worry your heart out. After that? Worry's not invited to the party.

Now, let's put it all together with a fun little exercise:

Stress Detox Challenge:

1. For one week, try a different stress-busting technique each day.

2. Rate your stress level before and after on a scale of 1-10.

3. At the end of the week, review which techniques worked best for you.

4. Create your personalized "Calm Down, Kitten" playlist of go-to stress relievers.

5. Share your top stress-buster with a friend. Spread the chill!

Chill is a journey, not a destination. Some days you'll be floating on a cloud, others you'll be more "serenity now, insanity later." And that's okay! The key is to keep experimenting and find what works for you.

And if what you need is a full break for a deep reset, join me at our first Uplifters retreat. It’s gonna be 3 days of deeeeeep relaxation blended with invigorating dream-building.

Luxury accommodations, healthy gourmet meals, wine, and all activities are included in the pricing. You can read more about it here.

Let’s keep rising higher together,

Aransas

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This is part seven of a 10-part series on Burnout.

In part one, assess your current burnout risk and learn the costs and symptoms of burnout. In part two, learn a clarifying technique for deciding what to say yes and no to. In part three, learn an easy trick for boosting your energy. In part four, I share an experiment you can run to understand what’s getting in the way of your progress. In part five, identify and adjust your time mindset. In part six, fend off energy vampires. Stay tuned for the rest of our series, where we will cover:

• Boundary Buddies: Cultivating encouragement and accountability  

• Doing it is Crushing it: Recognizing progress + self-compassion

• Hotter Every Day: Long-term fire-tending strategies

Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for lots more stories of courageous Uplifters and simple strategies for keeping your inner fire burning hot.

Your Next Uplifter

Our next episode of The Uplifters Podcast is headed your way on Thursday. You’ll meet

Eliza Factor

. Eliza is a novelist, inclusive space maker, mother of three, tender of goats, chickens, a dog and a cat who lives in Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley. Her big project now is setting up Lonely Worm Farm, a wheelchair-accessible flower, vegetable, herb and berry farm intended to provide jobs and community for adults with developmental disabilities. She is writing about the experience in her substack

Wayward Utopias: Farm, Fiction & Friends

. Eliza was nominated by Sabrina LeBlanc.

Uplift Your Life!

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Paid Subscriber Bonuses You’ll Find in Today’s Newsletter

✨ Huge gratitude to all of our paid subscribers! Your support makes all the difference.

✨ As always, all of my writing is free and you can listen to every episode of the podcast for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Substack, or wherever you get your podcasts. For those of you who are more visual or want to take a deeper dive with our guests and who want to support this work with a paid subscription, you’ll find the extended-cut video of my conversation with Holly St John Peck below.

✨ August Subscriber Workshop: I’m going to try something a bit different for our workshop by inviting you to join me for an activity I call Precision Manifesting. It’s a precise (go figure) and actionable approach to boldly declaring ideas and planning them into reality and I use it alllll the time. I can’t wait to share it with all of you!

Hugs and high-fives,

Aransas