STRESS MANAGEMENT
Coaching and Classes

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Stop Stress in Its Tracks 

We are told to ignore stress. Suck it up. Take it. Wrong. And dangerous. Some 75% of all doctor visits have stress as a factor. Instead, we have to challenge stress, dispute the false beliefs that drive it, and turn off its danger signal, or we can wind up hanging on to it for weeks, months, and even years. 

If you have trouble sleeping, high blood pressure, or can't leave work thoughts at work, you may be experiencing health, life, and relationship consequences from chronic stress. Multiple studies show the connection between job stress, heart attacks, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many other serious health problems. 

The good news is that you can manage the thoughts, reactions and emotions at the heart of the stress cycle. Get the skills to opt out of stress in my one-on-one stress management coaching. I'm Joe Robinson, author of Work to Live and a stress management trainer and coach who has appeared on CNN, Today, and All Things Considered. Turn off the danger signal of stress, and the stress response stops in four minutes. It's a skill you can use for a lifetime. Learn how to:
  • Manage pressure, deadlines, difficult people, and overwhelm
  • Separate yourself from your thoughts
  • Set boundaries and speak up
  • Catch yourself when stress goes off and turn it off
  • Avoid thinking traps and catastrophizing
  • Control anxiety and sleep better
  • Build resilience to manage any challenge
  • Leave work at work with work recovery strategies
Joe Robinson has appeared on and in:
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Changing Thoughts That Drive Stress

See Video: Joe Robinson explains why dogs are smarter than humans when it comes to stress. They can teach us a thing or two about a crucial element of managing stress and our minds: how to not hang on to stressful events for days, weeks, and months on end.

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Work Smarter, Live Better

See Video: Joe Robinson discusses the hazards of reflex behavior and the keys to smarter work and a better work-life. Joe has appeared on Today and CNN, and in Entrepreneur and Fast Company. He has led programs for organizations from IBM to Nestle, Kellogg's, LEGO, the Reserve Bank of India, and Anheuser-Busch.

Get Immediate Stress Relief

Stress causes countless worries and fears over our lives, but few of us are ever taught how to combat it in our regular lives. It's the missing life management class we were never offered. That's where I can help.

As a stress management coach, author, and trainer I have helped thousands of people at companies from Nestle to LEGO control stress. I give you tools to manage the reflex trigger of stress and keep it from morphing into burnout. With strategies from the latest science, you can stop stress in its tracks. It's very affordable and very effective.

 

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Stress and control

Where Does Stress Come From?

Stress isn't caused by what we think, an external event, deadline, or comment. It's caused by the story we tell ourself about the stressful event. It's our reaction to the event that makes it stressful. That's a good thing, since it means we have the power to change that reaction and the story fueling it and stop the stress response in its tracks. 

The stress response can go off within .02 one-hundredths of a second. It's so fast we have to either be able to catch ourselves quickly once it goes off, or be calm enough on the front end, so that we don't trigger it in the first place. I show you how to use both of these approaches to stop stress.

Stress is an emotional reaction that hijacks the modern mind and hands over control to an ancient part of the brain that unleashes raw, irrational emotions and thinks the year is 100,000 B.C. When something overloads your perceived ability to handle it, the ancient brain turns on the stress response and rash, impulsive, worst-case-scenario thinking.

If you don't contest the false beliefs of stress and resolve the problem fueling them, it can turn into chronic stress and then over time into burnout, which strips away all your coping resources — physical, mental, and emotional. That can lead to serious health consequences, including stroke and depression.

Fortunately, the thoughts of stress are not real. They are false beliefs that can be sent packing. In my stress management coaching, you learn how to manage the thoughts that fuel the stress-burnout cycle with strategies that put you in control of demands. 

You get stress management strategies to:

• Not buy the stress bait
• Stop the hidden engine of stress: rumination
• Change pessimistic self-talk 
• Build coping resources and resilience
• Deploy the best stress reduction processes 
• Stop burnout & rebuild depleted resources
• Improve time management and set boundaries
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Real Pressure, False Alarm  

Stress is a byproduct of a brain that wasn't built for the social stressors of the modern world. It overreacts to anything that overloads perceived ability to cope with it as if you are about to die. The pressure is real, but the alarm is false, unless physical life is at stake.

We have to catch the false alarm before we go down the autopilot road to irrational emotions and health problems. As author of Work to Live, which shows how to avoid the stress and burnout trap, and Don't Miss Your Life, on the stress buffer of engaged life outside work, I help you do that. 

Stress makes harmful alterations to systems not needed in a life-or-death emergency. It dramatically increases heart rate and blood pressure, suppresses the immune system, and shuts down digestion. Keep this going for weeks and months, and it's highly dangerous. 

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Manage Second-Hand Stress

Joe Robinson explains in an interview with Gerri Willis why stress is contagious and how we can avoid the false emergency of second-hand stress by not mirroring the stress of others.

Client Testimonials

"Joe's advice gave me the courage to take back my life, challenge my fear of imperfection, and realize that guilt is a choice. Thank you, Joe!"

Kristin - Government Attorney

"I was looking for a workplace expert who could help me develop skills to better manage stress at work. I didn’t think anyone could relate to, or understand, my situation. Joe was fantastic! I now understand the triggers for burnout and have learned what I can do to prevent it happening again. Joe helped me develop better boundaries, which have created a healthier work-life balance. I strongly recommend Joe. His sessions were affordable too. It was a win-win!"

Jill - Executive, environmental organization

"I hired Joe as a work-life coach and found his expertise to be incredibly worthwhile. He gives practical advice that will help you enjoy life, be more productive with less time working, and reduce stress. I frequently refer back to the great tips in his books, and have referred others to engage him in coaching sessions. I highly recommend Joe Robinson." 

Chad - Finance company owner

"Even if you love your work, Joe said, if you do too much of it, you'll hate it. That was me. Three one-on-one coaching sessions later, I accomplish more in many fewer hours, and instead of being stressed to the point of quitting, I look forward to both coming to work and going home without feeling guilty. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't benefit from Joe's coaching."

Susan - Finance Executive

"Working with Joe was the best choice I made when I finally realized I had to do something about my feelings of burnout and stress at work. He quickly helped me pinpoint the main issues causing my stress and then provided practical solutions that I could use every day. Joe’s methods are a perfect mix of intellect and practicality that helps you get to the bottom of the real issues quickly. I can’t recommend him enough and I’m in a much better place mentally today because of our work together."

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Changing the story of Stress

Manage Stress by Managing Thoughts

Mark Twain said, "Drag your thoughts away from your troubles by any way you can — by the ears, by the hands, or any other way you can manage it." He knew what the science knows, that the mind has a mind of its own. 

Managing stress is about managing the thoughts set off by emotional reactions — fears, anxieties, anger, resentment. We tend to grab any thought that's in the brain. Since it's in our head, we figure it must be true. But it's not. Just because something is in our head doesn't make it true.

If we engage with the false beliefs of stress, we wind up ruminating about them over and over until we believe them. That rumination is what causes stress. We have to be able recognize the false beliefs and not engage with them.

Here are some articles of mine that explain how the stress process happens:

 "How to Turn Off Stress Instantly and Be as Smart as Your Dog"

"Control the Hidden Engine of Stress and Burnout: Rumination"

"Work Stress Increases Risk of Heart Attack Even in Your Twenties"

Click for a Free Consultation

 

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Build New Coping Skills and Resilience

The goal with stress management isn't just to switch off the reflex equipment driving stress. It's to build coping resources and resilience so we can manage whatever comes at us.

The engine of resilience is something key to bouncing back in a world of challenges and one of the most important things we can know. It's called explanatory style, how we explain why bad things happen to us. A pessimistic style will take a setback as permanent and personal, boxing us in to negative rumination. 

Optimistic explanatory style views the situation as temporary and non-personal, allowing us to bounce back quickly. You will learn in my coaching sessions how to respond to events with an optimistic frame, even if you are pessimist by nature, and manage any challenge. See my article, "Bounce Back from Anything with the Resilience of Life's Silver Lining."

The science of optimism has powerful tools that we can use against the catastrophic thoughts set off by the stress response. Even the language we use — this always happens to me, I'll never make it — trap us in the bunker of pessimistic explanatory style. 

Click for the 7 Signs of Burnout

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Stress Management Coaching Gets Swift Results

If you are in a high-stress environment at work or elsewhere, stress management coaching can help (I also offer burnout recovery coaching). I work with you in one-hour consultations via phone or Zoom webinar. You get strategies to reframe stress and manage demands and reflex reactions.

Coaching is very effective at beating work stress and burnout. And very fast. In a few sessions, clients are able to overcome long-running challenges that some tell me they have struggled with for years. I've helped people around the country and from Paris to Perth get relief from stress and recover from burnout.

Make stress optional with one-on-one stress management coaching. Click on the button below to set up a free introductory consultation or connect with me at joe@worktolive.info or 310-570-6987. Look forward to speaking with you.

Click for a Free Consultation

 

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Stress Management Classes

You can also get stress management training by signing up for one of our online classes. They're convenient — every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday — available online wherever you are via Zoom webinar.

The class, called Calm in the Storm, gives you the ability to manage demands and turn off the false danger signal of the stress response. Learn how to reframe stress, identify and deactivate stress triggers, build resilience, manage self-talk, and improve optimism.  

You can find details on the stress management class at our online classes page. Click the "Buy Class" button for the stress session, then hit the "Book Class" button on the next page, and then on the next page click the "Buy Now" button in the right column to purchase.

 

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Tools for Overloaded Minds, Schedules, and Teams

Joe Robinson talks about the reflex habits of workplace stress that drive emotional reactions and get in the way of effective performance and a balanced approach to work and life.

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How Stress Leads to Lives Unlived

One of the insidious things about stress is that, not only can it wreck your health, undermine thinking, drive mistakes, ruin relationships, and cause conflict and aggression; it also banishes the very thing that helps keep stress at bay: enjoying your life.

Stress suppresses the play equipment in your brain. The last thing the ancient part of your brain that sets off the stress response wants to do in a stressful moment is have fun, since it thinks you are going to die that second. Stress keeps you fixating on problems and anxieties, which can add up to a lot of life unlived.

Get the skills to control stress, and you open up your world to the quality of life that is out there beyond the reflex survival equipment. It all starts with reaching out. I'd love to hear from you. Just click the button below, and we can set up a complimentary consultation.