De-Stress For Success with Isabella Ferguson
This podcast is about finding calm. I talk to the experts and bring you evidence-based practical methods to help you destress and live purposefully. In my early 40’s, I bowed out of a 20 year legal career “to spend more time with the kids”. However it was more than that. Decades of running on high anxiety and drinking to cope had had its toll on my nervous system and I was burnt out. I didn’t know it at the time, but from there I started years of recovery and ultimately stepped into a new way of living. I went to rehab, retrained as a counsellor and coach, created a successful counselling practice, became a motivational & corporate wellness speaker, took up painting and now support others to destress for success.
https://isabellaferguson.com.au
De-Stress For Success with Isabella Ferguson
The Mindful Leader: Cultivating Balance, Resilience and Performance with Tim Sprague
New episode out now on De-Stress for Success!
Ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of your tasks and wished you had someone to guide you through those tough times? Tim Sprague, our guest for this episode, a seasoned executive coach and the president of the International Coaching Federation Australasia Charter Chapter, shares his insights on managing stress, striving towards a better work-life balance and creating a 'healthier' culture in your workplace.
Tim introduces easy-to-follow methods to develop resilience and emotional control.
So, if you're in search of equilibrium in your professional life or striving to handle stress more effectively, this episode is packed with knowledge bombs to help you move from surviving in the workplace to thriving!
TIM SPRAGUE
To learn more about Tim's coaching services, visit: https://thecoachingpractice.com.au
ISABELLA FERGUSON
Free resource : "AM I DRINKING TOO MUCH?" FREE 5-DAY VIDEO SERIES
My web: https://isabellaferguson.com.au
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Today on the podcast we have Tim Sprague. Tim is executive coach and psychologist, not to mention corporate speaker. He works at the coaching practice, focusing on coaching leaders and teams to increase their insight, resilience and performance. Tim is the person you need, personally or for your team or workplace, to help you clarify your goals, build strategies to achieve them. Tim is also president of the International Coach Federation Australasia chapter. Welcome Tim to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, isabella, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Alrighty, so I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everybody at the start of these podcasts, which is how do you know when you're personally stressed and what's your go-to way of reducing your stress levels?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the body is a great tool. It's our best tool for knowing the world. It's actually our reactions to the world. My reactions to stress are physiological. I notice that I'm tight in the shoulders, and if I tune into my body then I'm aware that I'm stressed. So that's the first thing that happens.
Speaker 2:But the other thing that happens is a little more behavioral and it's pace. I start to speed up. When I'm stressed, I start to go, go, go, go go. And let me tell you, and it's actually hard to think at speed but that's what I do. Yes.
Speaker 1:So you're noticing these things and what do you normally do Just to kind of manage your stress levels? Do you have any any things in your routine that you tend to reach for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so firstly, I like to try and breathe once a day. I know we all breathe, but breathe more deeply and slow down consciously. I also do that when I come out of stressful situations just to calm myself down, so I'm not taking stress into the next meeting or the next situation and that breathing mindfulness, when I notice that I'm tight in my shoulders, when I notice I'm speeding up, is the easiest thing I do to calm down.
Speaker 1:Look, that's the. What I always try and teach my clients as well is just to notice their breathing. All of us do that shallow breath work, don't we up the top of our chest that we we don't realize that we're holding on to the stress and that we can let it go with just a few simple breaths? It's cheap, it's easy, it's at your fingertips. You can kind of do it whenever. Now, tim, I know you work with a lot of leaders, coaching and doing lots of work with them to kind of achieve their goals. Have you actually ever met a corporate leader or somebody that you work with that is in that professional sphere, that actually has achieved a work life balance?
Speaker 2:Some people have come close. I think most of the people I work with come because they haven't achieved it, so I tend to find that people have moved closer to it after working with me. But I don't know that anyone's found the perfect balance, because there are always model tensions and stressors on us and I think part of being in the world is dealing with those model stresses and coping the best we can. It's really hard when you're running a company or running a big division of a company and people are coming at you all the time asking questions, wanting things from you. You're having to make big decisions to become all the time and I think the better thing to do is to think about how we deal with those stresses.
Speaker 1:When people do come to you, what are the kind of the symptoms that they're exhibiting? That is assigned for you that there needs to be some work with stress management.
Speaker 2:I often find that bouncing around between tasks, so they'll start on something and then they'll remember that something else is due and or there's another problem and they're bouncing around and actually not solving anything. And so the more I notice that people are spinning, the more obvious it is they're under immediate stress. Yes, it's great to teach people a body scan and to test themselves where they hold their stress, like one shoulder's, somebody else might hold it in the gut, but when I see that erratic jumping between tasks and also just feeling like there is too much so that narrating of, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I feel like I don't have enough resources to solve the problems that I have in front of me. They're kind of the two biggest things that I see.
Speaker 1:And then I guess you're spread too thin and you're not doing any specific task particularly well.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So your efficiency is going to be affected. So, with that kind of overwhelmed feeling and no one likes that feeling and I think lots of people can relate to it We've got the endless lists. You don't know where to start. What are the tools, the techniques that you would like them to learn to help them manage, to kind of pull themselves out of that heightened state?
Speaker 2:Yep. So I know that you've already talked about another podcast, mindfulness, but it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And mindful breathing works too. So that's a good baseline in, and it's more than a baseline it actually takes us out of the fight flight trigative response stuff and there's good science behind it too. So I'll talk about that in a second. The second thing is in the cognitive techniques. But to come to the first one, it's really embarrassing as a psychologist to have 40 years of research to say that cognitive behavioral techniques are really effective for dealing with short-term anxiety, which is the extreme end of stress, and then some bugger comes out and does research and finds that there's something that's more effective, which is simply deep breathing, and you don't need a psychologist.
Speaker 1:But we don't know how to do it and we don't do it in a daily basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, and because I've got the science background, I like the physiology of it, which is, if we breathe out that deep breathing not the short in our chest breath, but the deep down to our stomach and using our diaphragm, we change the concentration of CO2 in our lungs and our body thinks we're exercising and we start to produce the endorphins which are the runners high and it pulls us out of the fight. Flight response, simply by deep breathing. But there's chemicals in it. So it's actually like you change your body chemistry simply by deep breathing.
Speaker 1:Didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's fantastic, and when I have somebody who comes into a session, often we'll just do some deep breathing, mindfulness and the mindfulness part, which is the cognitive the start of the cognitive techniques is to stop all the busyness. So if you just focus on one thing and to me the core of mindfulness is focusing on one thing at once and in this case your breath. There's lots of other types of mindfulness, but if you just focus on your breath, then all that busyness, all those other apps that are on your desktop of the mind close down, and part of that busyness of jumping between things, that scatterbrained nervousness, can decrease if we learn to focus on one thing at a time. The cognitive behavioral techniques that go beyond that start to get us to analyze the things we're saying to ourselves and we're thinking in our head about how bad stuff is, and I call this sometimes the oh shit moment. It's a technical psychological term.
Speaker 1:But we get it immediately.
Speaker 2:And often I coach people around interview technique, for example, and the nerves around that, and people say they freeze up in interviews and usually they don't or they freeze up. They say they freeze up because they can't think what they're actually doing is, they're thinking too much and they're going oh shit, this is a hard question. Oh shit, I'm not going to be able to answer this question. Oh shit, I'm going to fail this question. Oh shit, I'm going to fail the interview. Oh shit, I'm not going to go to the job. Oh shit, I'm not going to get any job. Oh shit, I'm going to end up unemployed. Oh my God, I'm going to be living under a bridge, one-eyed and drunk, and our poor brains, as smart as we are as projecting into the future, can't tell the difference between an imagined threat and a real threat.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so getting people to catch themselves catastrophizing, doing that catastrophization cascade of the oh this could be bad, or this could be worse, or this could be terrible, or this could be catastrophic, choosing each of the worst possible options and ending up unemployed, relationshipless, unloved, under a bridge. Yes, it's something we can go to really quickly, but we produce the same stress hormones when we do that, thinking as if we're being attacked by a sabre-tree.
Speaker 1:That's right. The body actually thinks that it's unsafe and under threat.
Speaker 2:So the technique is to notice that and I've got a lovely mate. She's been a coach for longer than I have and she calls it visiting the world of made-up stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, how does that work?
Speaker 2:Noticing that all that stuff other than this is a hard question. All the consequences are made up and I'm actually visiting the world of made-up stuff and getting clients to recognise that, oh, I'm making up all these horrible consequences or I'm making up what's in somebody else's mind. One of the other countries in the world of made-up stuff is the judgment of other people. Oh, I know what they're thinking about me and it's terrible.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Recognising that we're doing that catastrophisation or we're projecting onto other people a negative view is the first part of coming back to the here and now and it's like I can focus on the here and now.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And what I can do to fix, as opposed to how bad it could possibly be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's kind of being able to observe your own inner monologue. So I like that. I like that, tim, so you're basically giving it a name. What did you call it? You're visiting the world of the.
Speaker 2:Visiting the world of made-up stuff.
Speaker 1:And it kind of listens to. I like it yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it's a little silly. It's like a fantasy land that you go to.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It helps you go hang on a second. This is not real.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right and that's immediately relaxing, isn't it? Just by giving it that artifice.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, this isn't real. It's not actually happening now.
Speaker 1:And what happens after that? What do you do? So you've gone to that step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then there's a kind of solutions-focused thinking stuff that comes in, and Coach has done a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:You know we're working with people on the Okay, so what's the first thing you can do? If you can't solve it all and it feels huge, what's one thing we can do to start doing this and moving into that solutions-focused thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:And this all fits into a technique that psychologists use for anxiety, called the SOC stop technique. Oh, yes, and you've already said the observer, so you've got the O already. But it's a simple as stop, which is the S. Take a few deep breaths, which is the stuff we've just talked about in terms of getting the carbon dioxide out of your lungs, producing endorphins and calming the hell down and coming out of fight flight, and then observe notice what we're saying to ourselves, notice what we're reacting to in the environment and check whether or not we're visiting the world of made-up stuff.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:You know how real is this? Okay. And then the P is just proceed, but it's proceed in the knowledge of how I'm actually reacting. And it's the difference between being had by an emotion and having an emotion. Yes, okay, because when we don't stop and observe and we're had by an emotion, the emotion is driving the bus.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The tail is wagging the dog and people who are had by emotion say things like well, of course I hit him, he made me angry because they're just reacting. They're not stopping, observing and choosing their behavior. They're just acting out their behavior, and the behavior is driving the bus, whereas if they're having an emotion, the emotion is sitting beside them as a passenger on the bus and they notice that it's there. But they've observed there and they know what that voice is saying and what they're imagining. They don't even try and push it away, just traveling with them. But they're still in control and they can choose how they will proceed.
Speaker 1:And by doing that, you're putting yourself in quite an empowering situation where you're actually learning that you're in control. Yes, you can get yourself out of that high stress flight fight mode, yeah, and then do you see people being able to put this in practice. Quite a lot going forward, quite automatically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's our enemy here is habit. You're fine, our enemy here is habit. So, oh my God, I'm stressed, I'm just going to react to it how I want, how I was react. And so they get it.
Speaker 2:But putting into practice can be hard. So sometimes in coaching we come up with all kinds of tricks, like coming up with an icon, oh yes, like a stop sign that if people are carrying their folder around with them, they put it on and they just remember. Or somebody used to have a giveaway sign which is just don't react straight away, just let it wash over you, take a few deep breaths and don't react straight away. Yeah, and the great thing is about creating an icon is it can be something that's meaningful for you, that doesn't mean anything else to everybody else in the meeting or the context, so it's just a reminder for you. Yeah, the other thing is it's much easier to learn to ride a bike on the flat in a car park than it is when you're riding down the side of a bumpy hill being chased by bears. Yes, so practicing the deep breathing and observing your breath and stopping and observing yourself once a day makes it easier to develop that habit that you can then roll out when you're stressed.
Speaker 1:That completely makes sense. So it's like a muscle that you're growing slowly over time. It's your resilience growing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Look, I can imagine that you've been able to see a lot of your clients be able to develop this. Is it something that they are so grateful for at the end of the whole experience, just to know that they can get themselves out of that overwhelm link by that stop process that we've just spoken about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are some people that it's been a real revelation to yeah or I'm not sure we catch it.
Speaker 2:Whatever, people find it a revelation and I think that's been great. A lot of people don't recognize that they have self-talk, so it's just like, oh, this is really bad that they don't go back. Well, actually I'm saying it's really bad, I'm saying that to myself or my inner critic, saying I'm really bad, without being able to pull away. So stopping and observing and recognizing that that is just one of those voices that we come up to interact with the world and our judgment, and sometimes it's been helpful in our past and our youth. That's right.
Speaker 2:Because it's made us work hard or it's made us correct or whatever else, but recognizing that it's just something we're saying, it's not the truth, it's actually not true. Yeah, it's sometimes the biggest revelation and then using the technique just is a way of embedding it.
Speaker 1:There's some really good tips. So, with all of those sorts of stressful moments of the work or the ruminations or if you're finding yourself flustered and overwhelmed, you've got your mindfulness techniques, largely with the deep breathing and then work that they can do either by themselves or with you, just to kind of really develop the cognitive strength and resilience to focus on your inner critic and test it and enter into that world of make believe and realize what's true or what's not. I often, particularly because I work with a lot of lawyers, but I think it's with most people, to be honest, people who are in a highly stressed moment and it's we're coming up to that moment now at the end of the year where it's really hard to switch off from the office, as you're when you're leaving the office to go home. So a lot of ruminations, lots of thoughts about work. You can't kind of be present in your home life. What tips might you have for people just to try and switch off, really part of it is changing context.
Speaker 2:So getting into the environment, I mean there's great benefit from exercise. So one of the great ways to remove stress, too, is to make sure you exercise, and exercise in the world if you can is even better, because opening up that environment so that you're looking out to an infinite horizon actually makes us feel less closed and less under threat.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I've heard that as well, particularly for a neuroscientist that popped on the podcast at exactly that, that the panoramic view actually triggers your brain to get out of your head, out of your own stress and into into the environment. So, yes, that's a really good tip.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the natural environment also provides you with stimuli which aren't worked like. I am so lucky. I live in Clevelli, I can walk the walk to Bondi Beach and if I catch it at the right time and it's only twice a year you can see whales and like yeah how cool is that, yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty unique.
Speaker 2:So getting out whether or not you see a bird or just trees moving in the breeze, getting out into the world is really great. Exercising burns off the stress hormones, yeah, also helps you sleep better, and we know that sleep is a big predictor of well being, yeah. So so getting out and exercising is one of the ways to switch off, yeah, especially if you can then focus on that environment you're in. The other things to do are to go through that third space stuff where there's work in this home and there's a space in between. And if that's blurring out heavy metal music for you in the train on the way home and that works, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or if it's painting in watercolours, but finding a transition space before you're in the room. Now I think the guy that wrote the third space said that he built like a shower and a gym and everything from his garage to tour he comes into the home so that he does all this stuff. I don't know that we can all do that, but finding some way of doing something, whether it's reading a book on the train or listening to music, and music is one of my big things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are you finding that you're actually getting more work in terms of groups as well? So in the workplace, are teams learning to kind of work together to help each other out, to be more productive, be more resilient and less stressed as a team?
Speaker 2:It's really great when you can work with teams. I am finding I'm getting more teamwork because, yes, the systems theory view of resilience is its extra capacity. So when we move away from an individual and analyze systems, if the system has extra capacity in it, then when it's under stress it can use that capacity to solve problems. When you get to a team a team's a system and if you've got colleagues that you can hand stuff off to or can support you in times of stress, then that does make it easier for you to cope.
Speaker 2:Yep that makes sense, but also just having somebody to know that you're stressed can be really important. So the good teams do work in checking in with each other and building a system where they're working in the team to solve the problems of the work. Okay, so we're in the team and we're getting the reports out, we're getting the sales done, we're building the widgets. Working on the team is making sure that we're learning and we're supporting each other and we're looking at the health of the team. And the teams that work well do both things. If they just work on the team, then they're very relaxed and they're really cool, but they don't get any work done. So it's the combination of the two of working in the business to get the work done and working on the business to keep the team functioning well and growing.
Speaker 1:If there's somebody out there that's just feeling overwhelmed, not coping. It's the end of the year. I know that it's really hard to balance everything, particularly when all the workplace, christmas parties and festivities are ramping up. What might be some signs that they're physically manifesting, or you've got those ruminations that might be indicated would be good to actually pick up the phone and reach out to somebody like you, tim, for some sessions about how to kind of release this stress.
Speaker 2:I like the body scan, mindfulness stuff as well, which is just the sitting, closing your eyes and starting with your toes, tightening them, releasing them, starting with the arches of your foot, tightening them, releasing them, and just seeing where the tension is and when you get the oh my god moment. Oh my god, I'm really tight across the shoulders for me, or my neck or my head, or I'm really holding my breath and you're noticing that. That's one of the indicators. So just scanning your body and just seeing am I holding stress somewhere?
Speaker 2:The second thing is the what's your normal stress? Knowing what your stress reaction is. And if you're doing it and, as I said, mine is speeding up, I want to get more done because I'm really stressed and if I get that done, then maybe I'll get everything done, because I'm imagining to do too much stuff, but in my better self I noticed that that's oh, I'm doing that again. I must be stressed. Let me stop, take a few deep breaths, observe what's going on, then actually decide do I need to do everything, which is my receipt. So notice your stress behaviour, know your stress behaviour and look for it.
Speaker 2:And the last one is probably that if you're finding you're doing the scattergun stuff and you're jumping around between tasks and you're not doing anything because you're worrying about everything, then that's a really big sign that you might benefit from doing some work on that stuff. Or at least you need to take a break and some deep breaths, and some deep breaths.
Speaker 1:Tim, thank you so much. I really love this conversation. I like that a lot of your tips are accessible, but I can also see, when you might be having a prolonged stress you've tried to do it yourself why your services would be so helpful. Where can people find you if they want to learn a little bit about what your services are and look to see if you might be right fit for engaging you to help them out?
Speaker 2:Sure. So my website is the coaching practice all one wordcomau. You can come there. As you mentioned earlier, I'm the president of ICF, which is the International Coaching Federation. I'm not the president for the world. There are 55,000 coaches around the world. In ICF. I'm the president for Australasia. But if you go to the ICF website or if you look for somebody who has the ICF credential on their badge, then you know you've got somebody who's been trained.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And also we have to work under a set of ethics, and so they're going to be competent and ethical. There are a few people out there who the weekend warriors, who've done the two day online life skills course and hang out with the coach. So I suggest you look for somebody, and there are three levels of credential in ICF ACC, pcc or MCC. If you see somebody with one of them, they're probably going to be a good coach.
Speaker 1:Really good hot tip actually, tim. Thank you so so much for coming on de-stress for success. I'm going to work on my breathing techniques and listen to that inner critic.
Speaker 2:Okay, these are the things that have been great. See you later.
