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Transcript of Interview

SPEAKERS

Tim Bolen, Allison Graham, Devo Brown

Tim Bolen  00:00

Good Friday morning, welcome back to BT question for you, you feel a little bit overwhelmed and maybe stretched too thin. You’re not alone. There stress expert Allison Graham here with simple, practical strategies to help you relieve some of that pressure, but also to build resilience and rediscover that spark that is in each and every one of us, even when there’s no time for a break and Allison, come on in here, because I was just saying off camera with the start of the summer, and you’re trying to schedule everything into the summer to see everybody and do all the things, that’s when the stress really starts ramping up I find.

Allison Graham  00:39

It really can. But it’s interesting, because a lot of people in the holiday season, right at the end of the year, they go, I can’t wait till the summer. That’s when I’m going to get a break. And so we’re often looking for this future state where we’re going to be less stressed. And my message is, no, let’s deal with today’s reality and stop having the stress created around what is actually happening for you.

Tim Bolen  01:00

Let’s talk about the burnout. When do we feel that burnout? How do you know when you’re burned out?

Allison Graham  01:04

Well, you’re probably very exhausted. You’re not in the mood for things that you used to love to do, and you’ll probably find that you’re a little bit grouchier than normal, right? And things start slipping through the cracks. That’s when, you know, oh, maybe I really have to reset my

Tim Bolen  01:20

you said, don’t take a full on break.

Allison Graham  01:22

Well, you can, but it’s often not feasible, right? Like, if you can have, you know, 20 weeks of vacation, go for it, but most people can’t, and often it’s the balance of the home and the work and the all the pressures from the world that are coming at us. So we can’t just disappear from that and expect our stress to go back, because then when we come back from vacation, stressed again,

Tim Bolen  01:44

the big thing too, is guilt, and in the summer where you’re being invited to so many back your pool parties or a cottage, and then you can’t go, but you feel like you have to go. You have to do everything. What do we do about that guilt and kind of protecting our energy?

Allison Graham  01:59

So guilt is often about your own expectations and assumptions about other people’s expectations and assumptions. So if you don’t want to go, if you say yes, that is actually saying no to something you really care about. So reframing the guilt and making a decision and figuring out, what do I want to do and make that decision, because otherwise you’re going to end up with regret. You’re going to have a summer where it was everybody else’s decisions and not your own.

Tim Bolen  02:27

Yeah, okay, we can also, you also say to like to zoom in and zoom out, to identify issues you can solve, and look at that big picture, right?

Allison Graham  02:36

Well, it’s both sides, because we actually get overwhelmed when we look at everything. We have to do that huge to do list where our power is, like, almost like, you know, in an iPad, you kind of zoom in, and if you just look at one item at a time, you don’t get as overwhelmed. But also, if you look out, you zoom out and you say, Okay, where’s the context for this? And it actually can really shift our level of overwhelm and stress,

Tim Bolen  02:59

yeah. So, like, shifting your perspective, shifting your stress,

Allison Graham  03:02

that’s people will say, it’s the perspective. It’s not the issues that cause the stress, it’s our reaction to the issues, and that is controlled and influenced by how we perceive the challenges we face. And so you want to zoom in to get really clear on what you’re dealing with, and zoom out to get context.

Tim Bolen  03:21

You also remind us to shield ourselves from from activities, but also the people in our lives that do drain us of that energy.

Allison Graham  03:30

there are. So you’ve got to recognize when I’m with someone, am I feeling better for having being with them, or am I feeling more drained? Identify those people. You don’t have to cut them out of your life. Just minimize the amount of time, but also look at how you’re contributing to that relationship. What soundtrack Are you participating in? Because every relationship has two sides. It gets into a rut often. And if you change how you show up, the relationship has no choice but to eventually change.

Tim Bolen  03:59

Yeah, and then that taps back into the guilt thing. Yeah, too, right? With Friends, if you’re not hanging out with friends that you used to hang out with all the time, but we always evolve as humans, right? And we always kind of change. Then what about stacking fun onto the mundane?

Allison Graham  04:12

Oh, this is fun, because often we get so busy you forget who you are. Like, when was the last time you had a dance party while you were cooking, right? Or just did a cartwheel down the hall, or, like, high five with somebody, like, what is it like if you’re having to do laundry? I remember coaching a client. She’s like, Look, I just the housework drives me nuts, like it’s causing me so much, right? And I’m like, Well, what do you love to do? And she loved to listen to crime novel novels, so her time of cleaning and doing the laundry became her crime novel time, and it just stacked some fun onto the mundane.

Tim Bolen  04:47

I can get behind that. Because, yeah, in our house, a house of five with three kids, there’s a lot of laundry to do sometimes, but sometimes I do. I enjoy it because that’s that’s my time right to go upstairs in my room and watch a show or watch some sports, and while I’m folding the laundry and doing that where don’t bother daddy. He’s doing he’s doing the laundry,

Allison Graham  05:03

very important work.

Tim Bolen  05:04

Yeah. Where can we where can we find more online?

Allison Graham  05:07

AllisonGraham.com and I’m launching a new club. It’s an online club where it’s called, live your best life, and I’m going to be coaching. It’s free and just a place where people can come and find strategies to de-stress their success

Tim Bolen  05:20

is it helping each other? And

Allison Graham  05:22

here’s will be, it’ll be, I’ll be guiding it. And I have a lot of content, as you would imagine, and I’m just going to give it all there, because I think people are desperate for something to feel less stress.

Tim Bolen  05:35

Okay, as a stress expert, do you ever get stressed?

Allison Graham  05:38

Well, so here’s the funny thing, it’s like this. The resilience matrix is doing a keynote on this yesterday. It’s like you sometimes you’re in like victim mode, and you feel like you’re blaming the world. But we need to know the strategies to come out of it really quickly. So of course, I have my patterns and like every human, but judging ourselves for those doesn’t help us fix it. And so I’ve just started to identify, when do I feel really stressed, and how can I reset it in the moment? And that’s what I want for people to know, that when you’re having a bad day, you can actually shift the direction of that day to have an amazing day.

Devo Brown  06:14

Hi.

Tim Bolen  06:14

We can, let’s go to somebody who doesn’t seem to ever have a bad day. That’s our Devo Brown. You always, never seem to be like Devo is somebody that’s always, always positive.  Do you get stressed Devo?

Devo Brown  06:17

Here and there sometimes, but it has to do with other people, like I worry about others. I know Allison can probably relate to that with some of the workshops and the talks that she’s done, but also, Allison, when you talked about maybe doing a cartwheel in the hallway, yes, it didn’t end well for me. So I’m just gonna stick to dancing and doing the dance party while cooking. I think that’s the best or dance party while doing pet celebrations. Hey, let’s do that pet celebration time. Thank you so much. Some great advice from Allison, right there.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Stress management, resilience, burnout, guilt, energy protection, perspective shift, time management, relationship dynamics, fun activities, online club, de-stress strategies, victim mode, positive mindset, practical strategies, self-care.