How Kind Words Lower Stress

Lyle Hurd: It's a pleasure again to welcome Jim LaValle. Jim LaValle: Great to be here, Lyle. Lyle Hurd: Jim, we've talked about a number of things. One of the things that you always are talking to people about is learning how to understand and process and deal with stress and to do what they can to help other people not having increase their stress load by being associated with them. Give us a little bit of a outline of just what that does to an individual and how detrimental it is to our basic health. Jim Lavalle: Lyle, I'll tell you, and I've said this before, chronic stress is one of the most debilitating things that faces us today and it's because it affects every system of your body. So, if on the day-to-day basis you're waking up early, you've got children to get to school, you've got traffic, you have to deal with whether or not you've got all your emails answered the night before, you've got a meeting you've got to get to, your boss is in a particularly bad mood this week, coming down on you or you're the boss and maybe you're not in such a good mood and therefore the employees aren't so happy with you this week. Then you've got church group meetings after you get off of work, then one of your children have to go to the gifted child school, and the other one's going to soccer practice, and the other one has to go to reading classes, and all of these pressures are coming down on you every day. That's our lives today. When that happens, and we really hyper-excite our brain, it starts to create shifts in our immune system and the long run of that is that our bodies overheating or it's getting hyper-excited. What that means is that we create more oxidative stress; our body doesn't process glucose as well, so we'll notice ups and downs in our energy. So, the classic thing I see, Lyle, I ask people, "so you crash at 3:00, huh?" And they go, "how'd you know that?" Well, everybody I see that's overcommitted and overstressed because of adrenal fatigue and blood sugar imbalances, they crash at 10:30 and they crash between 2 and 3:30. And that's because their blood sugar is going up and down. In addition to that, they start to change their chemistry to the point where they don't handle stress as well. So, now all of a sudden, your child says something to you, and you find yourself biting at them. There, you're yelling back and after you yell, you go, "oh my god, did I say that?" Right? Lyle Hurd: Absolutely. Jim Lavalle: It's happening all the time, nowadays. Lyle Hurd: That is the other part of the question I wanted to ask you and it just how important is it for us to understand the stress that's involved in the lives of our partners, of our children, the people that work for us, the people we work for, the people that serve us in the grocery store? How important is it for us to be missionaries, a little bit to help relieve a little bit of pressure on other people? Jim Lavalle: Lyle, I think a kind word goes a long way and I've been a big advocate for just really reaching out and making sure that I don't add any more stress to a day than that's already there for someone. It's pretty, there are tough times. We're all under a lot of pressure, but it is really important for us to realize that kindness has a tremendous impact on the, the course of a person's day. It can change everything and I think we need to keep that in mind. We need to realize that if we're in our lives with our family, that were there for a reason, we're there because we love them and that to treat them with anything other than love and all of us are weak and are going to have our moments and our difficult times. But just to remember that my prime directive is, my Gosh, I got into this relationship because of love. I have these children because of love. We can't allow the pressures of financial impact or road construction or being overwhelmed at work to influence those pieces that are so important in our lives that really give us our satisfaction in life and so it's really important to see that and I'd say at the other end of it, you've got to practice at it. You got to take 10 or 15 minutes a day even if it's five minutes a day and say, "Okay, I'm going to turn the stress drain on." Drain out the stress for the day, whether that's through a book or meditation or prayer or you want to do Tai Chi. Whatever it is, make an active role, make an active play to say, "I'm going to eliminate and download this stress." Of course, we've talked about before, earlier, there's obvious things you can take to help your body to release stress. Whether it's thiamine, 5-HTP; there's several things out there that can help you, if you really feeling overwhelmed. Lyle Hurd: Thank you. That's exactly what we hope to you'll be able to help our audience with, me personally, and I've just really appreciate you. Jim Lavalle: Thanks a bunch.