7 tips for Stressing Less

Feeling overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of daily life? Wondering how you can navigate through the waves of stress with ease?

In this enlightening episode of me&my health up, host Anthony Hartcher is joined by the renowned holistic health expert, Heidi Horne, to unravel the complexities of stress and share invaluable insights on how to 'stress less'. Dive into a conversation that's not just about managing stress, but about transforming it into a positive force in your life.

Heidi, with her 17 years of experience in the realm of happiness and mindfulness, brings a wealth of knowledge, from deep breathing techniques to the power of positive self-talk. Together, they explore the top seven tips that are not only practical but also life-changing, offering you the tools to not just cope, but thrive in the face of stress.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to enhance their mental wellbeing, improve productivity, and foster healthier relationships. Whether you're battling workplace stress or seeking a more serene lifestyle, these strategies are tailored to meet you where you are in your stress management journey.

Tune in to this episode of me&my health up and embark on a transformative journey to 'stress less'. Discover how small, manageable changes in your daily routine can lead to significant improvements in your overall wellbeing. Don't miss out on these expert-backed tips that are set to change the way you perceive and handle stress.


About Heidi Horne:  

• Experienced Speaker: Over 17 years of experience, bringing depth in mindfulness, resilience, and positive mindset. 
• Diverse Audiences: Engages corporate stages, school auditoriums, and community events with contagious passion. 
• Mindfulness and Mindset Expert: Renowned for keynotes and corporate training, focusing on mindfulness, stress management, and resilience. 
• Published Author: Authored two globally published books, including the popular children's book, "MindFlip - Emotional Toolbox and Positive Mindset for Kids and Teens."
• Founder of Mindful Mondays: A movement inspiring educators and parents to cultivate daily mindfulness habits in children. 
• Corporate Trainer: Hosted trainings for companies like CISCO, Boehringer Ingelheim, Real Insurance, and the Australian Dental Association. 
• Event Speaker: Featured at events such as the Corporate EA/PA Summit. 
• Media Presence: Regularly shares insights on creating daily mindfulness habits and positive mindsets in various media outlets. 
• Real and Engaging: Known for her honest and natural connection with audiences, combining professional expertise with real-life experiences. 

Connect with Heidi Horne: 

Website: heidihorne.co
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/heidihorne
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heidihornespeaker 
 
About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher 

me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my health up which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

Transcript

0:08

Welcome to another insightful episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher. I'm a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your well being. And today, we are talking about relieving the stress. Yes, in that southern hemisphere, we're coming up to our summertime. And it was also Christmas time. And there's lots on, there's lots of Christmas functions. There's school holidays to plan for this Christmas presents, it's where you're going to have your Christmas holiday or where you're going to have Christmas Day who you're going to spend it with. There's so much on at this time of the year, a lot of workplaces shut down pretty much over the Christmas period. So they're wanting to tie off all the loose ends. And so this time of the year is hectic for us southern hemisphere is. So this episode is with a health and wellness expert. In this area of being mindful and remaining happy we have Heidi Horne. So Heidi Horne has 17 years experience in this space of happiness and mindfulness. She is a yoga instructor still practices it today still teaches it today, and she's also a keynote speaker and a corporate wellness speaker in this area of happiness and mindfulness. So we have Heidi on the episode to share her top seven tips on how to stress less. So without much further ado, I'd love to welcome you into the discussion I'm having with Heidi Horne. Welcome Heidi Horne and on the me&my health up podcast. How are you doing? I'm great! Thank you, Anthony for having me. That's great. So glad you can join us. It's really important to discuss what you are an expert in. You're a mindfulness and happiness speaker. So you have obviously, you know, developed expertise over the years around this topic and help a lot of corporates and individuals in this space. So really keen to explore this topic with you today. Lovely, thank you for having me and inviting me on your podcast. Fantastic. You're very welcome to be on the show. And I'm sure the listeners are thinking the same way will they'll be thinking that way, at least at the end of the episode. But let's start with my well known question, and it's how you've arrived at what you're doing today. Oh, well, Anthony, I've always been very much in the wellness space. I've been involved in some way in terms of wellness. For around 17 years, I started off being coming a yoga teacher and I used to in the very early days was a massage therapist, and then it's just evolved from there. I'm just always eager to learn more and develop myself as an individual but also what I can give others so trained in wellness coaching and life coaching. During COVID And the two years of lockdowns here in Sydney, I undertook more education in terms of counseling and mental health, which I found fascinating. And from that spurred me on to write a book, many targeted at kids and teens. And then after that, I sort of had like an aha moment of what I was teaching children and little kids in kids yoga and workshops, and at schools is what I was teaching corporates and CEOs in the workplace. So I realised that everybody needs to learn these skills. And that's what I'm really focused on now is giving people the tools for happiness habits, and simple, easy, actionable things that they can do from a list as little as one unit. And so it's really starting small so that you know, little small steps can have big results for people Over those years of constant never ending learning. What's been the big aha moments, the big, insightful, light bulb moments that you've experienced throughout those years, I suppose for myself, one of the most recent ones is, which is actually in my latest keynote, is that I broke my snowboarding and Christmas Eve just in the last Christmas. And for me, all the things that I was teaching others is what I actually had to undertake myself. So all the and I realised that all the busyness and all the things that I was doing for others is great, but I needed to look after myself really put that oxygen mask on myself. And if I didn't do that I wasn't anything to anybody else. So I think it's you know, I do talk about things like gratitude practice and everything you could do for other people, but at the end of the day, you're the most important person in your world. And always start with yourself even and don't let go of the guilt especially when I talk to a parent and mothers in particular? Absolutely, without you, I mean, you can't raise your children. I mean, there's you can't raise your children obviously, it'd be in the hands of other people. So it's certainly if that's, you know, really important to you, then yeah, absolutely, you gotta take, you've got to do the self care, you know, if you're sick, then you know, like, it's the kids looking after you. Exactly which can happen, but and you do need to accept that sometimes you can't do it all. But it was, it was really quite a mind shift for myself on that was okay to let some things go and just really focus on getting myself physically better. Before I could go back to doing everything I used to do. Yeah, that's a fantastic share. It's really, really good that those things often come into our lives to teach us something and you've taken the learnings. Yeah. It probably did. Fantastic, well, in terms of helping the listeners, today, we're going to be talking about your seven top tips for managing stress or stressing less, particularly as we're going into the busy part of the year, which is the summer, the longer days, like I guess there's the holidays coming up at the end of the year with Christmas, you know, attached to that. And then there's all the work you need to finish before you go on leave and all those sorts of things that people are starting to get busy mind. So let's delve into your your top seven tips. Okay, so I can talk about this for a long time. So feel free to, to pull me back, I suppose the first one is recognising when you are stressed. Because can stress can show up in many different ways in different people. And on occasion, stress can be good for us, it means that we really want to do our best and we care about something. But recognising especially when we do have at leading into chronic stress, which obviously this is one of the especially getting closer to Christmas, one of the peak times when that will come about. And sometimes we are so busy being involved, we don't actually stop to think about how we are. So recognising how stress affects you physically, whether it makes you fatigued, sometimes, you know overeating or under eating, having those million thoughts in your mind, you know, not being focused multitasking, and so forth. And it's also how it affects you emotionally as well. So really being aware of that and just taking some mindful moments. And if you are feeling stressed, having those first few stages to do something about it, because I think I read not that long ago that 75 to 90% of all doctor visits are in some way related to stress. So unfortunately, stress is not going away. And so we just need to think of ways that we can cope when we do have those stressful times in our life. And so yeah, so it starts with people recognising that they're stressed. And then yeah, and the second one is one of my big ones is using the breath, because we're obviously always breathing and the breath is so powerful and so simple to do and it's it's something that can be done in under one minute. So I like to guide people in lots of different ways of doing deep breathing predominantly through their nostrils rather than their mouth. And for example, just as simple as box breathing which is used by people worldwide for use by like Navy seals which go into obviously high very high stressful and dangerous situations. And it's been proven that even just sort of four or five rounds of this which will definitely be under a minute can help with stress and that's just in a way drawing a box breathing in for four holding for for breathing out for four and holding for four. So that's just one type of deep breathing that you can do and there's many more. Third one is mindset, so the power of your mind. Mindset is basically made up of what your thoughts and words are how you talk to yourself how you see yourself and the world around you. I like to sort of refer to sometimes as putting a pair of sunglasses on and what filter your sunglasses when the positive field or negative filter and recognising Are you talking to yourself like a best friend or a worst enemy. Because many of the times those thoughts that we have over and over and over and negative, not true and often on repeat so we have got those stories and that those talk that talking to ourselves which is affecting how we are in our in our mind in our in our day to day life. So the more times that you can change or create that positive resilient mindset is always going to help with stress. What do you suggest for your clients and I guess there's listeners out there that might be feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment and you know they're catastrophising things going terribly wrong, everything not going to plan and all those sorts of things. So how do you you know, what sort of advice do you give there? So I suppose one of the big things to remember is that I think 90% of things that we worry about are never going to come through. And a lot of the things that we're telling ourselves are not true. The you know, I'm bad at maths just because you failed a test when you were seven years old. So a lot of the things that are not true, and we have the ability to change that, and probably one of the easiest ways to change from a negative to a more positive mindset is rather than thinking of the gap where we still have to go, we still haven't done you know, what still not crossed off that to do list is thinking about the game, you know, how far we've come, what we were able to achieve what we can be happy and grateful for at this moment. And I really try and use this on myself as well. Because often we it's so easy to get caught up in that one thing that went bad in the day, but so many things went that went right. So just sort of doing a little bit of a treasure hunt at the end of the day of Oh, wow. Okay, yes, that one person didn't accept my proposal what or whatever it is. But everything, you know, everything else in the day went well. So you know, focusing on the gains rather than the gap. Fantastic. That's great insight. Number four is mindfulness. And one way of being mindful is breathing and deep breathing, which I've already mentioned. But being mindful is really about, I suppose getting out of your head and into your body and what's surrounding you. And doing this in a non judgmental way. So observing when you're hatching shoulders, for example, observing, when you're stressed, in your mind observing, if you're talking in a negative way to yourself and saying that's okay, and just observing, and then you have the ability to change it. So mindfulness, there's a lot of talk about it. And it doesn't have to be hard you can do mindfulness practice is from as simple as you know, 30 seconds to a minute. So that deep breathing, or just taking a moment just to stop and you know, look around you and and notice what's happening in your in your body as well, so what's your go, what's your go to? My go to is what every morning, I always start my day with just being in the moment. So I always have a set asset spot that I sit before I have a coffee before I look at my phone. And I just take a moment just to look at the trees around me or hear the birds and just do some deep breathing, but also just be happy for the day ahead and gratefulness is one of the easy ways to add mindfulness. But it also sets you up for that positive day as well. So it's trying to be in the moment when I did come out of my breaking my arm, which I did early in Christmas on Christmas Eve and sort of went into a little bit of a lower place for myself, because I used to set my alarm to go off at the beginning of every hour, and just take a few deep breaths and allow myself just to be start each hour happy just for 30 seconds. And yeah, it was probably quite a big game changer for me on, you know, having those little moments throughout the day. Fantastic. So you'll just sprinkling mindfulness throughout the day. Yeah. Not making it hard, you make it make it easy on yourself. Yeah, fantastic. So just doing, you know, a few minutes or as you said, you know, just a minute is helpful. 100%, which leads into the number of the next one, which is microhabits. And so as we get closer to Christmas, and you know, obviously New Year's Eve, people start to think about what habits they want to let go of and what happens they want to embrace and feeling that that's the date, you know, change these new habits. But I am a really big believer in creating micro habits. So micro habits, small manageable, just slightly moving the needle, things that you can do each day, that can have a big result and habits second them. So for example, if you're cleaning your teeth in the morning, saying, you know, affirmations today is going to be a great day I've got this, I'm going to go into this presentation and smash it out of the park, whatever you want to say in your head, or having a glass of water by your bed. So first thing in the morning, you're already starting to hydrate yourself after the night before so little things that you can do that really don't take too much of an effort can start your day in a positive way or continue day. And when you're feeling more positive, obviously, you're going to let go of that stress as well. And what are your five favorite micro habits, I suppose? Yeah, going to bed as I'm going to bed I usually the latest thing I've been doing is actually listening to our rain meditation, even though it's really hot in Sydney, and my 13 year old son's really into it as well. So it's a really nice way just to switch off your brain and I'm going to see when it takes you know you can just have that going not looking my big thing is not having you keep them and get my phone for about half an hour in the morning. So having that Time to myself before I get involved in emails and work in social media, having that time just to set how I want myself to be before I get involved in, in the world, really, that's fantastic. That's great insights, No problems. And then I suppose the other last two sort of tips is how you set up your beginning of your day and how you set up your the end of the day. Because often we talk often I talk about what you can do during the work day to let go of stress. But it really does begin with the morning before you've even stepped out of the door, and what you do at the end of the day. And these are really powerful. I wrote a ebook recently, and it's called the first 10. And the last five, and it's based on the sort of powerful 15 minutes can really, you know, change your day. And it doesn't, once again, it doesn't have to be 10 minutes and five minutes, it could be even just one or two minutes. And you know, a couple minutes at the end. So if we're looking at the end of the day, what you can do that sort of is you're triggered in your mind to know that this is when the workday ends. Because I do find a lot of people have that blurred line between work and life, even though they might be leaving a physical work, they're still looking at their phone, checking work emails, or having notifications come out. So having some micro habits of things that they can do to signify that it's time to rest will help them lower the stress of you know, any impact that that work had, whether it's as soon as they get home, they change to the closing, just do a five minute walk around the block, for example, the morning, I've mentioned already before, but how you talk to yourself in the beginning of the day, will affect the whole day. So if you if you look outside, it's raining, you know, you've missed a bus and you've got a presentation, you're worried about telling yourself I'm so stressed, I'm so busy, I'm going to be late for work, it's going to be a bad day, you've already set your day. So this there's a thing called the 17 second rule where it said if you hold a positive thought in your mind for 17 seconds, it will get so strong, it will attract another one. Hold that for 17 seconds attract another one and link four of these 17 seconds together, it will be strong enough at 68 seconds to manifest into your day. And I'm sure we've all had those experiences where we've told ourselves how the day is going to be good or bad before we've left the house, so that's fantastic. Yes. Setting the intention. Right. It's setting yourself up. Yes, yeah, it's really about I believe, you know, what you do first thing in the morning is really powerful for how you're doing the rest of the day is going to be so fantastic. And then obviously you've got your you'll plan throughout the day, such as if you get a bit stressed or feel a bit uptight. You go to your box breathing, yes, yeah, get outside and an eye if you're, if your desk gets cluttered, just give yourself one minute to do a clean up off your desk doesn't have to be overwhelming, but when we see overwhelm around us creates more overwhelm might be, you know, the start of every hour just standing up and having a stretch, when you physically get rid of the tension in your body, it's going to help with your mind as well. And when people are looking at that long to do list, if you got any tips as to how to look at that, well, I always have a to do list and it never ends. So just knowing that it will never end. It's not you know, in a bad way but it's just basically prioritise what are your must do tasks and often we leave them to the end, the ones that we really don't want to do but then the probably the hardest things to do pop them at the beginning. If you've done the hardest things in that first hour or two, the rest of the day is gonna seem a lot easier. So but it is good to know that that to do list is never going to end in not a negative way in a positive way because it's not just you never getting to it's everybody in the world because we can always I'm sure we always add something else onto it. Absolutely, and whilst we've got to do list, we're living right Exactly, we sitting around twiddling our thumbs to Always six foot under we don't have a to do list to do lists. As they give Stephen Covey's you know you talks about eating the frog first thing you know the hardest, most difficult task yeah and often we do shove that to the back I know my fridge needs cleaning as I think about this and it's the thing that I ever said I'm like I have to do that and I do you know is like but it's beautiful down by the beach. You know, if I went got up and actually did it she it would be one less thing off that list and then I get at the beach. Habit stacking is it No, it is on the list on Saturday. if then else. If I do that, then I can do. Exactly, having a reward as well as nice, yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks, I didn't really appreciate you sharing those top seven tips to stress less and be free and be you. So it's a great time of the year to be being mindful of those top seven tips and for the listeners, you know, putting sprinkling them through your day or take the gems the top three for you and put them into your day. Heidi, how can the listeners best connect with you? Well, I'm on most of the socials. Usually as Heidi Horne speaker, you can also reach out to me via my website, there's a free happiness habits download there. So click on that and it's got the five sort of top tips for happiness habits and incorporating your day. And it's just https://www.heidihorne.co/ all with the e.co. And that's it in reach out and say hello. Fantastic. And listeners, I'll put those links in the shownotes so you can go directly to the show notes and click on the links. Really appreciate your insight today. Heidi is there any closing remarks you'd like to leave with the listeners Just be kind to yourself and remember that you are the number one person in your world and and just start with one minute like that's my happiness tips is you know, keep it super simple. And if you want embrace, you know, meditation, mindfulness, anything like that, just start with one minute and then grow up from there. So fantastic.Thanks for the insight Heidi, I really appreciate it. And to the listeners. Thanks for tuning in to another insightful episode of me&my health up

Podcast Disclaimer: 21:44

This podcast and any information advice opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical healthcare or professional advice and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this podcast, connected wellness Proprietary Limited operating under the brand is me&my health up does not make any representations or give any warranties about his accuracy, reliability, completeness or suitability for any particular purpose. This podcast and any information, advice or opinions or statements within it are not to be used as a substitute for professional medical, psychological psychiatry or any other mental health care or health care in general. me&my health up recommends you seek the advice of a doctor or qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Inform your doctor of any changes that you make to your lifestyle and discuss these with your doctor. Do not disregard medical advice or delay visiting a medical professional because of something you hear in this podcast. This podcast has been carefully prepared on the basis of current information. changes in circumstances after publication may affect the accuracy of this information to the maximum extent permitted by the law, me&my health up disclaims any such representations or warranties to the completeness, accuracy merchantability or fitness for purpose of this podcast and will not be liable for any expenses losses damages incurred indirect or consequential damages or costs that may be incurred as a result of the information being inaccurate or incomplete in any way. And for any reason. No part of these podcasts can be reproduced or redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in a form without prior permission of me&my health up.