A Holistic Approach to Managing Stress & Burnout With Mental Performance Coach, Theresa Giunta
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In this episode Victoria is embarking on a mindfulness journey with her guest, Theresa, a certified mental performance consultant and CEO of Theresa Marie Consulting. They discuss everything from her sport-influenced upbringing to the science behind stress to how to increase productivity. Theresa brings her experience as a collegiate athlete to the table, shedding light on the crucial skills of adaptability, vulnerability, and resilience that were honed on the field. She emphasizes the importance of mental toughness and the similarities between entrepreneurs and athletes, such as the need to take risks, set lofty goals, and manage high levels of stress.
Listen in as they explore the power of time blocking and how it can be leveraged to increase productivity. Theresa underscores the significance of focusing on one task at a time, and how understanding our circadian rhythms can help us identify our peak productivity hours. But, it's not all about the grind. They also talk about the need to identify and address burnout and stress. Theresa shares her insights on recognizing emotional patterns, utilizing recovery tools like exercise and meditation, and the importance of rediscovering our purpose.
The conversation continues with mental preparation for optimal performance and the unexpected benefits of boredom. Victoria and Theresa cover the four key components of mental readiness - sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, and self-talk. They also discuss the challenges posed by digital distractions and the importance of awareness to prevent burnout. Theresa wraps up by sharing the power of branding in scaling her business and how embracing boredom can spark creativity. Don't miss out on these game-changing insights!
Get to know Theresa [3:24]
Theresa has always had a love for sports and competition. Between growing up and being raised as a Philly sports fan and having two older brothers in sports, Theresa was influenced by sports at a young age. From being her brother’s target practice to being the youngest on her high school varsity team, Theresa had learned to have a tough mindset and thick skin. Theresa attributes her upbringing and the support of her parents to instill the concept that there’s a good balance of challenge and support, and you have to challenge your best and challenge your limits to strive to be great and strive for excellence and accomplish your goals.
Theresa is a two time All-American lacrosse player. She also now owns Theresa Marie Consulting, where she works as a mental performance coach, inspiring and empowering individuals to unlock their true potential and become limitless in their performance. Theresa says that the physical toughness she developed at a young age and continued to develop through playing collegiate lacrosse, has helped her develop the mental toughness that is the foundation of her business.
The overlap between athletes and entrepreneurs [12:27]
Mental toughness is a choice. You get to choose the hard thing to train your brain to be strong and adaptable. When it comes to sports, a lot of times you lose more than you win. This can teach you how to be flexible and vulnerable and how vulnerability is a strength to build trust, relationships, and connection. Playing sports can also teach you how to let things flow and not overthink, to trust your training, trust the process and trust your preparation and allow that all to come to fruition. The most important thing you can learn from sports though is failing. Entrepreneurship teaches you a lot of these same skill sets. It’s a lot about taking risks, failing, adapting, and doing it all over again. For both athletes and entrepreneurs, you’re operating in a high state of chaos all the time. Knowing how to prepare behind what you can control and then learning how to be adaptable with what you cannot control is so important. You can’t always control what happens to you, but you absolutely have the power to choose your response.
Does stress always have to be negative? [16:05]
Stress is just an activator. It activates our body, often to respond to a situational demand in the moment. When we’re stressed, our body is alert to survive. It’s preparing to perform something, and this system is activated whether or not we actually need to go into survival mode. So the effects of being stressed occur whether we’re acting out of fear, worry, apprehension, or even if we’re acting out of excitement or surprise. Stress gets a bad rep because it’s all about a perception, and if we’re perceiving the situational demand as something that’s fearful and overwhelming or something that's exciting and an opportunity.
Training entrepreneurs to prepare for low stress environments [19:19]
First let’s describe a low stress environment. How are you preparing for your day? Do you take time to have mindful moments? How are you destressing at the end of the day? How are you setting yourself up for success every morning? Those are low stressful environments.
Theresa says that the first step is to identify what high stress is for you and what those situations are, because when you know that, then you can prepare for them ahead of time. Having a consistent routine around that can help mitigate the stress in the moment. A lot of times we react to our stressors before we even think, so the most effective way to combat this is to train our brain to have space before we respond to the stressor.
How to increase productivity to decrease stress [21:26]
A common pain point for entrepreneurs is not having enough time in the day to do all the tasks they need to get done. But is it that there isn’t enough time? Or is it that you’re not using your time efficiently? Theresa challenges us with this thought and continues to share her productivity tip: Time Blocking. Sit down and time block your taks for the week, and then for each day. Base them off of your high priority tasks and low priority tasks. Then what’s even more important, is to remember to schedule your wellness and personal tasks as well. When you time block, you actually start to see how much more time you actually have. That’s the key to increasing productivity, because when you narrow your focus on just one task, you can almost cut in half the time it takes you to complete it.
Victoria adds in from her experience, that if she doesn’t prioritize the things she doesn’t really want to do but are high priority tasks, early in the day when she’s the sharpest, then it will actually interfere with all the other lower priority tasks that she enjoys doing because it’s stuck in the back of her mind. Theresa agrees that getting the high priority tasks that are not so fun, done first thing, will set you free to do the things you enjoy later on. It’s also like a reward system for yourself.
How much stress is due to procrastination? [29:00]
Theresa shares that it depends on the type of person you are. Procrastination triggers stress because it triggers a sense of pressure. Some people are motivated in high pressure situations to get things done, others are not. We all have different thresholds. Short answer though would be yes, procrastination does increase stress. It’s just a matter of what your stress threshold is and how much you can handle.
Let’s talk about burnout [34:20]
Both Victoria and Theresa have experienced burnout before in their entrepreneurial journey, as many of us have. But once you detect burnout, then what? Theresa shares that it’s about having proper recovery tools and even more importantly, a support network. The first step is recognizing the signs of burnout. Are you fatigued? Are you lacking enjoyment? It’s important to build self awareness around your emotional patterns with your external environment and your situational demands. The second step is having those recovery tools for burnout. A lot of times we think we need to keep pushing through, but in reality, we just need to take a step back and gain space and clarity to move forward.
Training your brain to avoid stressing over the hypothetical [39:10]
It’s a daily battle, but the first step is understanding that we actually are hardwired to think this way. We’re hardwired to think in the negative, so we have to train our brain to think in an effective mindset or a positive mindset. The more we feed into the negative feedback loop, the stronger they become. So, acknowledge where those hypothetical thoughts are going and accept the reality of the current moment, but then take action to bring yourself back to the present moment and focus on what you can do right now. We want to bring those hypothetical thoughts back to reality and the present moment so that we can control our next move.
How can we prepare our minds for optimal performance as business owners? [41:29]
Theresa has a lot to say to this question, but the simplest and most effective is to gain consistency in your performance daily, gain consistency in your routines right, and train your brain and your body to work together. The way we can achieve this is by preparing and taking care of four different components. The first one is sleep and recovery, having proper sleep routines and being consistent with the time. Next is properly fueling your body with proper nutrition and hydration. The next one is mindfulness, training your brain to gain space before you respond, pausing, and having mindful moments during the day to take a break before moving onto the next activity. The last component, and arguably the most important one, is self-talk and the way we speak to ourselves. The most elite performers don't always have the most positive thoughts or perfect days, but they're just aware of their self-talk. So they can set up their response systems and train their brains to have effective affirming self-talk.
Embracing boredom and why you should do it more [45:44]
These days, it’s so easy to entertain ourselves at every second of the day. We often pick up our phones to find relief from boredom, but in reality, there are benefits to not taking every spare moment to catch up on social media. When we engage in high performing activities, we’re expending a ton of energy, so when we finish our brain needs to reset and recover. That’s essentially what boredom is! During this time of boredom, our brains are also interconnected with other networks, primarily the hippocampus, which is where we store memories and reflect on what we learn and where we create. Embracing boredom is really important because it not only allows our minds to reset and recover, but it also strengthens our memories and learning systems to help us create and innovate so we can become better problem solvers and learners. Boredom allows for creativity.
Theresa Marie Consulting’s brand differentiator [48:10]
Theresa’s energy and passion for this work, and the ability to be vulnerable is her brand’s differentiator. Vulnerability allows for deepening the connection, which creates powerful and meaningful relationships which is an essential tool in the work she does with mental performance. Without connection and vulnerability you can’t build trust, and without trust you can’t challenge others to expand their limits and trust that they can do the same.
Key Quotes
“Your brain is a muscle and, just like our physical body, we have to train our brain to be stronger, to be more adaptable, to handle or to grow stronger.”
Theresa Giunta
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