How to Use Stress to Your Advantage

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I hope you're having a great week so far, and if you haven't, guess what? Today is not too late. Get on it. The week is not over. But today I want to talk to you about stress. I have a feeling, and it's just a gut feeling, that many people listening to this podcast are dealing with stress. and that's because it's part of life, right? It's part of our life. But I read a great article recently from Harvard Business Review, another one of my go-tos, right? On how stress can actually be a good thing for you if you know how to use it. If you know how to use it, that's the key. Because everything you're hearing right now in media and medical and all that is talking about all these negative health impacts of stress, which are true, by the way. Prolonged stress can have major negative impacts on your health. It can age you. It can, you know, it can physically hurt you, right? And disease and all kinds of negative health benefits or impacts, I should say. But what if you took a different perspective? What if you learned to take stress and look at it as something you can use as fuel and kindling to create results in your life? What if you took a different perspective? I'm just asking you. Stress, think about it for a minute. Stress-free life, it's boring. It's unfulfilling. It's back to that episode I did on Tony Robbins' Six Core Human Needs. Certainly, we need to find ways to have certainty in our life, but having a little bit of uncertainty, having a little bit of stress is what makes life worth living. And more importantly, when you can find ways to take your stress and develop growth from it, it's even better. I mean, think about some of the times that you've had the most stress in your life, or maybe take another perspective. Think about times that you've grown the most in your life, personally, physically, mentally, in a relationship. Think about it. And I would argue that you probably had some degree of stress or obstacles or things you had to go through in order to get that growth. I truly, truly believe that your greatest growth comes outside your comfort zone. It comes from stress. I mean, I had a particular time in my life where I was crushing it. I was crushing it in business. Many of you know my story. And I went through a divorce. I went through a business, massive business change. I lost one of my key partners. it became one of the most stressful times in my life. But I can tell you this and I think if you think back about situations in your life you could say the same I learned and I grew And when situations like that happen again I know that I can deal with them because I stronger because I'm more insightful, because I'm smarter, have a little more wisdom. At least I'd like to think so, right? So stress doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can have good attributes if you look for them. now obviously we don't want to have sustained stress that's never good but focusing on the benefits that can come from stress that's something that can really make a difference in your life so this article i read talks about how the key to this is to learn how to balance that right reduce the bad impacts of stress and capitalize on the good and there's really three steps they share to do this. And they seem really simple on the surface and sort of intuitive, but I want to draw them to your attention for the simple reason that if our thoughts and our philosophies and our perspective on life affect our life, then it's important for you to think through your thoughts and philosophies on life, right? I want you to think through how you can change your perspective. So the first step is to see your stress, to see it, see it. Most of us just deny, avoid, label, do anything we can to avoid stress or we get overwhelmed and we react to it, right? That's how we handle stress in our life. But here's the thing, and listen to me on this. Neuroscience has acknowledged that simply acknowledging, they've proven this, neuroscience has proven that simply acknowledging stress can move it from like reactive centers in the brain where you're automatic and you're reactive to conscious and proactive centers. You know what it's like when you deal with a problem and you're just dealing with it and you're reacting to it, it's fight or flight. It's something totally different than when you're consciously trying to solve problems and being proactive. So changing your perspective neurologically can benefit you. Plus, avoiding stress is just completely counterproductive anyway. So it's better to see it and recognize it. And you can try things like mindfulness and breathing. And, you know, these kind of exercises are ways for you to not only deal with it, but center yourself and control and deal with it in a more proactive manner. So the first step is to see it. The second step is to own it. You've got to own it. And a way that I really liked that you could do this is very simple. just recognize that if you're stressed about something, you must truly care about it. Because if you didn't care about it, you wouldn't stress about it, whether it's relationships, business partnerships profit growth whatever it is And when you recognize that you must care it a positive spin right When you recognize that you must care about something if it stresses you out this releases and it just unleashes positive energy and motivation that you can use to deal with the stress. Because there's going to be stressful times in your life and your journey. I mean, come on. You don't think you're going to grow and develop and expand and create the results that you want to create, which I know are huge, without a little stress or without a lot of stress. In fact, accept it, own it, expect it, right? I expect it. I know that when I'm dealing with stress, something's happening. I'm going to grow more. It's this mental discipline, the things that you're looking for. Sometimes, you know, if you own it, that's when you know that it's okay, that it's okay and you can move to the next step, the third step, which is use it. Use it. You got to see it. You got to own it. But then you got to use it to your advantage. Now, this one I really like because it's this idea that you can turn a problem into a solution. Finding ways, like they talk about in all kinds of different business, combat, sports, whatever, find a way to use your opponent or your obstacle to your advantage as a solution. Ryan Holiday puts it really good in his book, The Obstacle is the Way. People try to avoid obstacles and the truly successful thought leaders, leaders, people that have made growth and progress in their life, recognize that the obstacle is the way. Obstacles are what give you strength or what give you growth or what help you to become stronger. And if you want to create this life that you were meant to live, you've got to level up. And that's what obstacles and stress do for you. I mean, think about it. Your body's literal physical response to stress is things that you can use. Here's the thing. I know most of you think that stress will kill you, right? Your body's response will kill you. But listen, think about it for a minute. When you deal with stress or a major obstacle, it increases your focus. It increases your alertness, your stamina, your energy, your awareness, your skills. You get hormones, adrenaline, dopamine. You know, you get the idea, right? Stress responses can focus you. Use it. Use it. Growth comes from stress. You know, think about it. You can't go into the gym and lift weights and grow without stressing your muscles. You can't, as a corporate athlete, you can't build something big without stressing your and testing your weaknesses. So your perception and your reaction to stress determines your results and your responses, whether it's positive or negative. If you perceive it as a bad thing, you're gonna have negative responses. If you perceive it as a positive you gonna have positive responses So when stress is more long and it not easy to find solutions like let say you saying man there just no way out of this I've got this, you know, divorce. I've got this relationship thing. I've got a long-term issue. And you can't seem to find a way to take the positive perspective of it. Then simply move your attention to the learning and the growth benefits. Tell yourself, do it out loud, write it down in your journal. I'm going to grow from this. I'm going to learn from this and it'll just trigger that positive response to stress. I'm going to give you a ton of examples of where stress can help you better. Mental toughness. We all know what mental toughness can do for you. Stronger relationships. They only come through stress. They don't come from the easy street. Greater endurance, greater strength, greater physical stamina. You know, I look at, many of you know the logo that I have, the Phoenix. The phoenix logo is very symbolic in a lot of ways. It's not just a tattoo I have on my arm. It's rebirth. It's growth. The phoenix is an animal that, in mythology, lived forever. But it would come to a point where it was at the worst part. It literally would build a nest and burn itself up in flames. I mean, how many of you have thought your life has become a dumpster fire you could burn up in flames? But it would rise from that a stronger, more energetic, more beautiful bird. And that's ultimately what we're trying to do. We're trying to help you to find ways to create the life you were meant to live. And to do that, sometimes you have to go through stress. And I'm not talking about searching from looking for stress, right? I'm talking about taking something that typically will derail most human beings and learning to capitalize on it. It's flipping the script. and if your thoughts, perceptions and philosophies, like I said, create your life, wouldn't you rather adopt a philosophy that says I can use stress to my advantage rather than avoid it? I would. And so I hope this perspective and thought on stress and how to use it to your advantage might help you to reframe what you're doing and how you're doing it in your life, how you're dealing with stress in your life. Or maybe it's just giving you some solutions. Maybe it's giving you some hope. Regardless, I hope it's something that'll inspire you to change the way you look at things. Because like Wayne Dyer says, one of my favorite quotes, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And I really believe that. So have an amazing weekend. Have a great time with family, friends, business. It's not a day off, but it's a day to grow. Everything about your life will take you to the next level. And that's my message for today. I hope you have an amazing weekend. Once again, my name's George Wright III, and this has been The Daily Mastermind. Transcription by CastingWords