#69: A Stress Plan: 4 Ways to Take Charge Before It Hits

Most of us try to manage stress when it’s already happening.
We see stress as something that just happens to us.

But what if it’s something we can prepare for?

In this episode, I share a coaching story that completely reframed how I think about high-pressure seasons. Because stressful weeks aren’t the problem — walking into them without a strategy is.

Whether it’s a hard conversation with someone you love, an overwhelming stretch of responsibilities and commitments, or a moment you know will activate you, there is a way to prepare your nervous system ahead of time.

This episode will help you stop reacting to stress and start leading yourself through it.

You can’t eliminate stress.
But you can make a plan to manage it — so it doesn’t manage you.

3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Planning for stress is not fear-mongering — it’s wisdom.
• Preparing ahead of time makes stressful moments feel lighter and more manageable.
• Pushing through is not a strategy — planning is.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE START DREAMING AGAIN GUIDE

Check out all my coaching and course offerings - Coachcarlene.com

MORE FROM ME

Follow me on Instagram:  @coach_carlene

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Your support helps me reach more dreamers who need these insights. 🎙️ Thanks for tuning in to the Distracted Dreamer Podcast! See you next week!

FOLLOW NOW
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow the podcast. I'm adding episodes every week, and if you're not folllowing, there's a good chance you'll miss out. Follow now!

Episode Website 

Transcript

Speaker 3 0:01

You're never too busy, too tired, too old, or too anything to pursue your dreams. Welcome to the Distracted Dreamer Podcast, where you'll learn how to move all those never ending distractions aside and chase your dreams with confidence.

0:22

Hello. Hello my friend. Welcome back to the Distracted Dreamer podcast. I'm your host Carlene, and I am so glad that you are here today for part two about how to prepare. For stress. Now, before we dive in, I just gotta ask you something. If you have been loving the distracted dreamer and these episodes have been helping you maybe think a little differently or make a little more room for what matters to you, could you just take a minute to support the show? Like wherever you're listening, you can just click subscribe. Or leave a like, or rate it five stars, maybe write a quick review. Like one sentence is all we need, whatever feels easy, because when you engage with it, the platforms, they share it with more people who might need this too. So thank you. Truly, thank you. Now I've got a story to share with you. I was on a coaching call recently with a client, we'll call him Joe, and joe has been doing incredible work in coaching. He's been building new habits and systems. He's getting really consistent and he's showing up differently. But when we got on that call, I could hear something in his voice. And I asked him about it and he told me, he said, I'm in the middle of a few really stressful weeks. Like work is really intense and I'm trying to keep the momentum going with these habits and everything that we've been working on. And I also wanna be really present with my family, and honestly, work and family, and all of it is just stressing me out. And underneath that was this kind of quiet pressure of like, if I can't handle all of this perfectly, then I'm failing. And he felt like the stress was happening to him. And you know what? This is where so many of us live. Can you relate to that? We think stress is something that's like attacking us. We're the victims and it's something outside of our control. And I have to tell you we're all wrong about that because what if, instead of thinking that you're a victim of stress, you thought, what could I do to prepare for the stress? Not from a place of fear, not from a place of overthinking it, and certainly not from a place of worst case scenario, spiraling, but from a place of you know what, it's for good measure to prepare to be stressed because it's going to happen. You can't eliminate it. Here's what I know. When we have stressful seasons coming up, we tend to just tell ourselves, I just gotta get through it because you know what? You will have high pressure weeks. You will have to have difficult conversations, and you will just have seasons where your plate feels really full. And the goal isn't to eliminate stress because I hate to tell you this, that's not possible. The goal is to lead yourself through it. And we talked about this in the last episode about leading yourself through it, and one of the ways that you lead yourself through it is to prepare for it. So today I'm going to walk you through four ways for you to prepare for that pressure and to manage that stress before it even starts. I want you to remember these four steps. They don't remove the stress, they make it manageable. Let's start with the first one. The first way to prepare for a stressful season coming up or a stressful day, whatever it is, is to always anticipate the difficulties and ask others how to deal with those stressful situations. Most of us go into stressful events. Hoping that they'll go well. Like we wing it, we react, we cross our fingers, and then we're surprised when our heart races and our thoughts scatter. But you know what, everyone faces stressful situations. So the question isn't if you'll feel stressed. The question is, did you expect it? Did you anticipate it? So maybe you have something coming up. Maybe you got a presentation or a launch, or a performance review or a test, or maybe a hard conversation with somebody that you love and you already know it's going to activate you. It's going to activate your nervous system. So we anticipate that preparing to be stressed. It doesn't mean that you're being dramatic, it just means that you're being realistic. So if you're taking a test. Yes, you study the material, but you're also anxious days before the test. You're anxious, uh, while you're taking the test, and you're anxious after while you're waiting for the results. What you wanna do is ask someone who's done it and ask them, what did you tell yourself before? Not what did you study, but what did you tell yourself before? What was your mindset to prepare yourself? Ask them, how did you calm your nerves during the test? So when you got to that question and you were like, oh my gosh, I have no idea. I've never heard of this. I am just winging it. How did they handle that? And then you wanna ask them what helped afterward, because you're still a bundle of nerves, you still haven't gotten your results back. And here's the secret. Borrowed experience. It shortens your learning curve to managing yourself during those stressful moments. So when you anticipate the difficulty, when the stress feels expected, then it doesn't feel catastrophic anymore, and that makes it manageable. Okay, now we're gonna go one level deeper. Because anticipating difficulty, it helps you expect stress, but expecting it isn't the same as knowing how to walk through it. And this is where most of us fall apart. Because we don't have a plan for ourselves. I know. Plan, plan, plan. But this is really, if you're gonna have a plan, plan for your stress. This is very important, so let's bring this close to home. Because when we talk about stress, yeah, sometimes it's work, but a lot of times it's personal. It is that conversation that you've been replaying in your head for like three days, or three weeks, or three months. It's the one where you actually need to say, you know what? That hurt me. Or, Hey, I'm overwhelmed, or I can't keep doing this, or I need something to change. And even thinking about it, it just makes your stomach tighten and. You're a bundle of nerves and you haven't even opened your mouth yet, and then you know what you do. You start imagining how are they gonna respond? Will they get defensive? Will they shut down? Will they twist your words? This is exactly where your planning and stress management changes everything. You wanna think about that, and it's not because you're trying to control them. It's because. You are trying to keep yourself steady when you're in it. So here's what you do before the conversation, instead of spiraling in your head, sit down and get clear and ask yourself, what is my real intention here with this conversation? Do I wanna win this or do I wanna be understood? And then you wanna ask what outcome would feel good to me. Do you want them to do something do you need them to take action on something, or do you just want to be heard? I always tell my husband, I'm like, I don't want you to fix anything. I just need to vent. If you're having a venting conversation, make that clear that you're just venting. You don't want their input, you just need a set of ears and somebody to nod along with you. But when we're having these kind of hard conversations, this isn't about venting. This is about, you're having a very serious conversation about something that really matters to you. Maybe it matters to your family, it matters. So you have to anticipate the hard parts and that anticipation it, it might make you anxious and that's okay, but you have to anticipate the hard parts. You have to think if they get defensive, what will I do? What will I say back? What if they misunderstand me? How will I help clarify what they don't understand? What if they say something that stings they say something hurtful. How are you gonna keep yourself from snapping back? So remember here, you're not preparing for disaster, but you're preparing your nervous system, you're saying. This might be stressful actually. You're saying this will be stressful and that's okay and I can handle that. And that's not overthinking it. That's leading yourself okay, the next thing that you have to do is you have to decide in advance who you want to be in that moment during that conversation. So how do you wanna show up? Are you going to speak slowly and not use blaming words? Are you going to pause before you react to whatever they say back to you? Um, if you feel overwhelmed. Are you gonna take a deep breath instead of raising your voice? How are you gonna show up? Maybe you open the conversation with a whole lot of honesty and just tell them, this is really hard for me to bring up, but this really matters. This is important. And that sentence alone, it shifts the tone because now you're not attacking that person. You're inviting them to the conversation. So stress, it often escalates when we feel caught off guard by our own emotions, but when you plan for those emotions, they're not gonna scare you as much. Now, what about after the conversation? And here's the part that we never really think about, after it's over, your body is still activated, even if it went well. So you wanna plan this part too, after the conversation, will you go for a walk? Maybe you'll journal it out, maybe you'll pray. Maybe you'll just sit quietly. Do you need to send a follow-up message to that person that says, Hey, thank you for listening. Thank you for hearing me. Do you need to give that person space when you plan for before, during, and after? You don't just survive these hard conversations. You get to move through them intentionally, and that's what managing stress really is. It's not about eliminating the tension. It's not pretending that you're not afraid of what could happen, but preparing yourself so when your heart starts pounding, you don't panic, you lead. That's what matters. Okay, now all that planning, it sets the structure, but your brain, it still needs rehearsal. What you wanna do is you wanna take all that planning that we just did, and you wanna be able to visualize it and role model it over and over again. Visualization, this isn't about worrying, it's about training your brain, worrying. It plays disaster on repeat. Visualization plays what you're capable of on repeat. So if you're about to have that hard conversation, just close your eyes and see it, see yourself calm and clear and grounded, and handling those difficult responses with maturity. Play the whole thing out in your mind. Don't stop at the awkward moment. See yourself navigating it. You're not pretending that it's gonna be perfect. You're preparing your brain to recognize, Hey, I can do hard things. The more familiar your mind is with the scenario, the less threatening it feels in real time. So again, you're not eliminating stress, you're lowering its intensity. And finally, there is the last step that it makes everything feel a little lighter, and that is to enroll other people. We live in a culture where independence is praised, but almost everything feels less overwhelming when you're not doing it alone. Study groups perform better than solo studying. Mm-hmm. Training partners increase success and fitness friends increase commitment and reduce anxiety. Think about training for a marathon. You could do it alone, but who could you enroll? A running partner, maybe a coach, maybe a friend who checks in weekly with you. Now, whenever I set goals, I don't just write like, what's the goal and when's the goal? And the deadline. I also write, who can I involve? Because asking for help, it isn't weakness like that's a strategy and it's a great strategy. If you're heading into a stressful season, let someone know. If you're about to have a hard conversation, run it by someone you trust. Connection regulates your nervous system and isolation, it amplifies your stress. So you know what, Joe? He didn't need fewer responsibilities. He needed structure, he needed rehearsal, and he needed support. And so do all of us. If you're in a stressful season right now, or if you know one is coming, here's what this really comes down to. You're not eliminating stress, you're not pretending. That it doesn't bother you, but you are preparing yourself to move through it with some steadiness. So again, here's your four steps. First, always anticipate difficulties and ask others how they handle'em. Borrow their wisdom. Number two, plan your stress management plan, the before, the during, and after the event. Number three, you want to visualize that plan. And role model the capable version of yourself over and over again. And number four, enroll other people. Don't do hard things alone. Don't do that. There are people out there who want to support you. And I wanna go back for a moment to that hard conversation example, because some of you have one of those waiting for you. And you've been carrying it and you've been replaying it, and you've been avoiding it, and maybe you're feeling your chest tighten right now. Even just me talking about it. You have to remember, the goal isn't to eliminate that tightness. The goal is to expect it and to prepare for it to say, you know what? My heart might pound. I might not find my words. My voice might shake. I might feel emotional, and I can still lead myself. You are strong. You're not gonna get it perfect and you're not supposed to, because you know what? Stress will flood your system. Sometimes that cortisol is gonna spike, your body's going to react. You are human. But when you anticipate it, when you make a plan, when you visualize yourself steady and when you invite someone else into the process, stress doesn't own you anymore. You walk into it with intention, If this week feels heavy. Take a breath. Don't brace for impact. Prepare yourself with all the wisdom that you have because you have a lot more wisdom than you think you do. And lead yourself with intention. And remember, you do not have to be fearless. You just have to be prepared, and I know you absolutely can do that. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And come back and hit play next week. I'll be right here. Ready to welcome you back.

Carlene 16:15

Oh, and one more thing. This is the legal language. You know, the stuff that the lawyers put together, and they say that I need to read this to you. So here we go. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I'm not a licensed therapist. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professionals. Got it? Good. I will see you in the next episode.