#scaling #business #personal development #stress #self-improvement #practices
How to Deal with Stress: Practical Tips and Recommendations
There are a lot of questions about stress. What do I do when I'm the one generating stress? When I sit and stress comes not from external events, but from within me all the time. It's like paranoia, creating these negative thoughts, problems. I build illusions, hypotheses, weird states. This inner anxiety endlessly projects and generates.
Your stress state depends on where you are: where you live, places you visit, what you do in the morning, day, and evening, who you talk to. Who's your boss, employee, spouse, kids, parents, environment. What's your sky like, what country do you live in, what news do you read or movies do you watch, what do you consume, how much do you sleep, what do you eat – everything affects your state.
Learning to notice and identify the moments that cause stress during the day and understanding where you can change something and where you can't is crucial.
But not everything can be changed immediately. If your spouse or your parents cause stress, you can't change them. Instead, you need to learn to communicate, find a common harmonious language, learn to listen and hear, develop proper speech, opinions, observation, help, love, labor, and compassion towards them. Even if they are indeed guilty and cause endless stress – they're an external cause. Enter a state where this stress no longer arises even if they do wrong. Walking down the street, a poor person swears at you. Some react aggressively, others feel compassion.
To combat stress, there are two basic practices to do daily: just 5 minutes a day of reflection. If you can do 20 minutes, do 20 minutes. Do it every day, ideally at the same time. How long should you do it? For as long as you want to develop, scale, and grow.
You must tell yourself: "If I don't practice, I don't develop."
Simple rule. Don't look for a golden pill to practice for two weeks and then indulge. Managing stress for two weeks, then making things worse is not the way.
First Practice
First practice: spend five minutes each day reflecting on how you treated other people during the day. What were your feelings, expectations, stress or negativity, love, joy, or happiness towards each person? Try to recall all situations from the day and highlight those where you had negative attitudes, desires to gain something, and put this in firm observation and judgment. This should be avoided – treating people poorly. Reflecting on your attitude towards others is the first practice.
Second Practice
Second practice: review the actions you took towards others during the day. Sit and recall for 5 minutes: did my actions increase others' stress? Specifically in terms of actions. Did I do something bad or good? Sometimes a negative action might not cause stress in someone. For example, stealing from someone is a negative action. There are many such negative actions. Thinking badly or judging someone falls under the first practice. The second practice involves recalling situations where you directly caused or wanted to cause someone stress. Identify these situations, recognize you shouldn't behave this way, and firmly tell yourself not to do so.
To judge doesn't mean to punish yourself, but to acknowledge that it was wrong. That's enough.
How Practices Work Against Stress
These two simple practices, 5 minutes a day, can replace hours of other practices, retreats, meditations – anything. Retreats, trips, and even meditation for many are one-time events. This is a daily practice. If you can do it for a long time – that's fantastic. Is there an end to this practice? Probably not. It will be a long, ongoing practice. But it's important to note that most people can't take on a lifelong task, even if it's the best, ideal task for them. What are 5 minutes a day? Every day you practice is a plus for your development, a sign you're on the right path, even if you do it for just a week. Try it for a week if long-term commitment is challenging. That's still incredibly valuable – just one week. Especially if long-term actions bring you negativity.
If you say: "I can't take this practice because it needs to be done for 10 years."
Do you understand that you admit it's normal to treat others poorly if you can't always monitor how you treat others?
Then maybe this isn't the right place or time for you. I've launched the V100 program – a monthly development program with me, with no end or beginning. You can join anytime. By joining, you get the chance to be in a development system for a low monthly fee ($100–150). This is what you pay to be in my environment, under some observation and moving forward with various actions. People need help, a mentor, an observer, a group of people – a place to find this. This program is a powerful movement and development forward, where I'm personally invested in ensuring you always see your next step. There are many next steps, not just one. When you see the best next step for your personal development, you take it. There are next steps in your work or business, family, health, thinking, occupation, spiritual life. Many next steps.
Individual Perception of Stress
People often say they can't handle something at work, like making 50 sales calls. Yet, they open Instagram or Facebook 40 times a day and scroll through a thousand posts. Or an SMM specialist says they need to constantly story-tell and post reels, finding it incredibly hard. But they post thousands of photos in a relaxed setting.
The fundamental difference is in one state, a person finds an action easy and stress-free, not viewing it as a challenge. In another state, they see it as a challenge and get stressed. For example, if you asked me to cook dinner for 15 people now, it wouldn't stress me – I know how to do it. I'd do it easily, possibly even enjoy it. For someone else, the mere act of doing something for someone would stress them out, and they'd avoid it. Someone avoids it by paying others, someone avoids it by not having it.
One person planting flowers may feel stress, another may feel joy. Someone will hire others to plant them, never experiencing it themselves. Another just won't have flowers or nature exposure because it stresses them out.
The solution is observing your life, constantly tracking events, understanding the true reasons for avoiding certain actions.
Many people say: "I don't plant flowers because I don't like or find it interesting", "I don't perform because I don't like or find it interesting", "I don't work on the computer because I don't find it interesting", "I don't negotiate because I don't find it interesting", "I don't learn about kids because I don't need them", "I don't interact with kids because I prefer other activities". They block potential stress-inducing activities.
Whenever we don't want to do something, the first step is to see if it's stress, not just lack of interest.
I don't take on a new project because it stresses me, not because of risks. I don't call someone not because it's futile or they're aggressive, but because it stresses me. I don't move to another city because it stresses me. I don't help someone because it stresses me. Just stress. I don't meditate because it stresses me. I don't call my mom not because she's bad, but because it stresses me. I don't read a book because it might cause reflection and stress. I don't write a resignation list because it stresses me and I'll have to deal with it. I don't take up a new sport because it stresses me. I don't care for my body because it stresses me: recognizing it. I don't build personal relationships because it might stress me: personal relationships mean interactions, leading to stress.
Tracking Stress
A powerful action is asking yourself when you hesitate on any task or idea: "Do I not want to do this because it's unnecessary or because it stresses me?"
If you say it's unnecessary, check again for stress. Verify if it stresses you. If it doesn't after several checks, it's just not interesting and no stress – don't pursue it. Unnecessary actions shouldn't stress you; if they do, that's a red flag.
When you say others don't affect your stress, but you generate it yourself with bad thoughts, illusions, future anxieties. Setting a goal, failing, getting upset. Or setting a goal, achieving it, realizing it's not the right goal, and getting upset. Self-demeaning, self-praising, self-punishing, generating stress.
My advice to handle stress towards others seems irrelevant. But that's the fundamental solution. It seems all stress is self-generated. If you investigate, you'll find other people contribute to our stress.
Stress and Self-Development
In reality, your development is tied to how you treat others.
If you stop generating stress for others, you'll stop generating stress within yourself. The cause of self-generated stress is stressing others.
This applies to everyone. It's not 100% of stress issues but a key development point – focusing on others. Not to remove your stress but to avoid causing problems for others. If done to remove your stress, it will always be a substitution: doing good for others for self-benefit won't relieve inner anxiety.
Start doing good for others and observe. Just start, even if you mark it as a task for stress work. Recognize the need to learn it because you heard it from Alexander Volchek. Believe him, and start doing it.
If you knew self-generated stress linked to this, you'd resolve it automatically. Stress wouldn't exist, because that's true mindfulness. Denying the link between your stress and others rejects a fact I see. I tell you: "Approach it differently." Your human ability is to take simple tasks and perform them, even if it causes stress.
Here's where your human ability to accept a simple task and complete it, even if it causes difficulty and stress, comes into play.
For many people, doing something good for others causes stress – it's a paradox.
Ask yourself: "So, when I try to do something good for Masha, Polina, Katya, Sasha, Petya, Vasya, I feel bad inside and get stressed? What's wrong with me?" This is the first question to ask yourself. Then live through it, start repeating the actions, doing good deeds. This should create a feeling of love inside you: it doesn't happen because Katya is bad and stresses you out when you do something good, but because you don't know what love is.