Instant Stress Relief with Brenda Miller
When you think about things that are keeping you up at night and affecting the quality of your sleep, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? I’m going to take a wild guess and say - stress.
How often do you find yourself too stressed out to fall asleep? You’re laying there, thinking about the day that just passed or the day that is coming tomorrow; you’re thinking about all the things you did wrong and about all the things that can go wrong tomorrow. Stress affects us all, and everyday life gets hectic - work, kids, responsibilities - it catches up with us at the end of the day and keeps us up.
But what if I told you there was a way to dissolve stress as it arouses, techniques and strategies you could use to dissolve that stress before it detonates once your head hits the pillow?
Brenda Miller is here to show you how.
Brenda is an award-winning, bestselling author and founder of The Kid Code, 30 Second Parenting Strategies — 100 ways to get ‘right now relief’ in an upset with your child—or anyone else! She has taught conscious conflict resolution in six countries. Her books, international speaking engagements, and 10-minute parenting courses taught by her and the Kid Code teachers help give parents strategies for dissolving stressful situations—before they detonate.
Our Natural State is Stress-Free
In our recent conversation, Brenda explained that she got interested in conflict resolution after noticing that she had lost her “belly laugh.”
She just wasn't joyful anymore. And she wanted to find her belly laugh again.
As she dove more into this, she started paying more attention to kids because their nature is genuine, creative, inclusive, innocent and joyful. And pretty soon, she noticed that this is our true nature. As soon as we feel playful, we feel 100% natural.
As soon as we feel compassion, we feel natural. Nothing else comes in to guide us in those moments. Brenda then noticed that it was a huge waste of a lot of mind space and energy when she went into a negative state.
Stress disrupts our natural state, and it fractures our peace of mind.
When we stay stressed, we're fracturing our most important relationships: our relationships with ourselves, our kids, our partners, our colleagues, with everyone. And Brenda believes that somewhere along the way, we’ve inadvertently and unintentionally lost the ability to make ourselves a priority in terms of finding and staying in our natural state.
Strategies to Manage Stress
As a true expert, Brenda shares some of her strategies when it comes to managing stress:
You can give someone grace instead of grief when they make a mistake. But, once you make a mistake, you can't undo the mistake. So it's up to us to decide how to act and who to be.
You matter more than the mistake you made. If you say and feel the truth of this, you bring yourself back into a calmer state.
Make the mistake right. Apologizing and fixing our mistake feels much better than justifying or ignoring it. So this is an opportunity to change how we respond and feel inside, affecting everybody around us. And that takes less than 30 seconds.
Put notes around the house or in your office, little post-it notes that say things like: Don't cause a fight, make it right or Bless the mistake.
The dunce cap strategy: Imagine a dunce cap on your head when you start feeling angry. Brenda recommends families to have a dunce cap in the house. Nobody should ever wear it because it's not intended to shame somebody. Instead, it’s used to bring the person back into awareness, so you put it on your own when you notice anger. That's often enough to make you laugh and dissolve the anger in 30 seconds.
Put a note in your pocket (and if you don't put a note in your pocket, you can imagine one there) with the words on it “I don't need my angry story anymore” or “I don't need my raging story anymore.” Often, those words are enough. So, every time you feel anger starting to rise, you bring the note out, or you think about it, and that takes your attention from attaching to it and then letting the rage or anger take you away.
Look for the benefits. According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, anger shuts down our immune system, and gratitude improves it by 50%. Gratitude lessens stress and anxiety immediately. It's delivering us to our true nature by dissolving toxic emotions and releasing dopamine and serotonin - the feel-good hormones.
Try mantras. Brenda suggests that you try reciting mantras if you wake up in the middle of the night and cannot go back to sleep. One of her favourites is: I'm sorry, please, forgive me, thank you, I love you. These simple words, also known as Ho’oponopono, have proven extremely powerful.
Hopefully, some of these fantastic strategies will help you improve the quality of your sleep and manage your stress levels throughout the day.
If you’re interested in Brenda’s courses or her fabulous new book, please visit https://www.thekidcode.ca/.
