I have legitimate and visceral stress of car accidents, stopped traffic, forgetting my passport, losing my kid, missing my flight… pretty much anything at all that could go wrong pops in my mind and my stress spikes when I have an upcoming flight: making mental management crucial to lowering stress.

I’ve come to know that my brain goes wild when it comes to flights.

Given that we have been living out of suitcases and have lived in thirty different homes in the last five years… you could say that I have some experience when it comes to flying, which provided me the opportunity to practice intentionally lowering my stress by using exactly what I teach my clients: mental management.

Stress is fascinating to me. Partly because I have suffered from eczema from the age of two until my late thirties, thus making stress a crucial step in my healing journey; Although stress is not the only factor that flares eczema, it is an important one.

Although useful stress can save our life, chronic unnecessary stress causes health problems. Physically it lowers our immune function, it dampens digestion function, it causes rashes, it raises blood pressure and mentally it inhibits proper brain function and dampens higher decision making.

When I was two, the doctors and my mom had me using a bio-feedback machine made for kids where I put my hands on a plate type of thing and was encouraged to make the plate change colors… using my thoughts and my breathing.

In my late twenties, a boyfriend of mine introduced me to Heartmath, which I used as an app on my phone with a little finger connection that offered the same encouragement: breathe and focus my mind to lower my stress.

Now I have come to accept that internally lowering stress is part of my day-to-day life. I choose to do it holistically, without medications, although I do find CBD to be useful from time to time too.

Breathing and focusing on something calm are part of mental management, AND there is another piece that I find crucial for my day-to-day stressors. It has to do with noticing my thoughts as simply just thoughts, interrupting them and then talking back to the thoughts that my brain comes up with that create stress.

Like when it comes to flying… I now plan for and expect an arsenal of ‘something could go wrong’ thoughts and instead of believing them and spinning out with them, I mentally manage them. It is incredibly simple and powerful.

As for flights, I also have a mental management checklist of the essentials: credit card and passport. I make sure I have those two essentials, and the rest I have decided is not worth costing, raising my physiological stress.

Stress is something we all can mentally manage with learned skills. It is part of what my clients learn in my food and mood process. Mental management is not a magic pill, it does take attention, and it does work.

If you would like my undivided attention and help learning how to internally lower your stress using mental management, then sign up for a free consultation call with me to begin working with me by pushing on the ‘coach with me’ button.

Are you not quite sure you are ready?… then check out my free food and mood email course to learn the first 5 steps of my food and mood process that you can start applying to your life today. >> This is in the banner on my site.