"It keeps my head out of garbage"

These are the words of one of my "Redefining Strong" participants. She has various ways of managing her stress, anxiety and mental health each day including her art/crafts and gardening as two big ones. She often will bring some of her art/craft projects to share with the group and myself.

Recently while she was showing me her latest project and answering some of my questions about it, she said: "It (the hobby) keeps my head out of garbage". What an awesome way to put it!!!

Thank you, A.K.! 🙂

The unfortunate reality is that TOO MANY people DON'T have this SKILL. What's the SKILL? The ability to manage stress, anxiety and mental health. The common answer to my question, "how do you manage your stress?" is one of two things:

1) "I don't know"

2) "I grab my phone / lay on the couch and watch Netflix"

(i.e. I "numb" or "avoid" the stress)

I client was going through some BIG stressors in her life this past year. To add to that, she was stressing about not sleeping well (because she was stressing). When I asked this question ("How do you manage your stress?") to her, I got #1 as her answer. The conversation then flowed into the fact that we CAN'T possibly manage stress in any manner, if we don't have anything to reach for that allows us to do so in our own way. If there's no tools in the toolbox, it's pretty hard to create change (to no fault of their own).

The point of this post is not to dive deep into all the options, ideas and nuances of stress management (this is very individualized), but it's more to point out the FACT that TOO MANY of us are feeling DRAINED, UNMOTIVATED, BRAIN FOG, "BLAH", ANXIOUS and STRESSED BECAUSE we have NOT been taught how to manage that side of our health. It's not "right vs wrong" or "strong vs weak" - We LITERALLY have NOT been taught!!

The wonderful part about learning to manage our stress and anxiety is that we have a blank canvas and an ABUNDANCE of options and things to experiment with:

☯ For my client who "keeps her head out of garbage" with her crafts and gardening

☯ For me it's drawing, board games, reading or getting to the woods

☯ For another client it's reading

☯ For another client it's getting outdoors

☯ For another client it's painting

☯ For someone else it may be woodworking

☯ For someone else it may be writing

.... The list of possibilities is ENDLESS.

The KEY FACTOR in stress management is CREATING TOOLS for yourself that YOU can reach for when you need them, just as my client in our strength & mobility group does. Part of the process is also learning to RECOGNIZE WHEN you NEED to reach for the tools in your stress toolbox.

We've come to a place in human history where we arguably have the LEAST sense of WHO WE ARE and HOW TO CARE FOR OUR OWN HEALTH, because we have so much more EXTERNAL "noise", comparisons and information than ever before. Never have humans been able to DISTRACT themselves so well, as we can today in 2025. Never before have humans compared themselves to a stranger on the other side of th world on a regular basis. "Distraction" CAN sometimes be ok. The problem is when we reach towards it as our ONLY means of "managing" our stress and anxiety, it ACTUALLY isn't managing it. Our chronic stress response is still VERY MUCH fired up and eventually it catches up to us, if we have no way to "keep our head out of garbage".

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'Coach D' is a certified Sleep, Stress Management and Recovery Coach (SSR) through Precision Nutrition. If you recognize the feelings of low energy, low motivation, mood swings, the feeling of "never being able to relax", poor sleep etc...

Connect to discover how SSR coaching can help!!