143. Five Barriers to Joy: Worry Overload

Lives of Courage with Jessica Stong

We haven’t been taught how to deal with stress! And we’re more fried than ever. Anxious about our health, money, work. You name it.

In the final conversation on the five barriers to joy, I discuss what happens when you're overloaded with worry. The kind of worry that pretends to be helpful and necessary.

What you can do:

Back up and breathe. Lengthen your exhalation. Research shows that when our exhale is a few counts longer than our inhale, the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain down through the neck to the diaphragm and abdomen, tells our nervous system to chill out. Our heart rate drops, blood pressure lowers, and the whole body physically calms down.