How Do You Handle Stress?

Take Empowering Responsibility – A Soulful Approach to Standing Strong in Yourself.

December arrives with its glittering lights, its warm gatherings and its promise of joy – but it also arrives with pressure, busyness, emotional intensity and expectations. Even the most peaceful of hearts can feel stretched this time of year. And when you add in the energetic pull of a Full Moon, it’s no wonder that emotions swell, old patterns surface, and stress rises like a tide. So, the question becomes:

How do you handle stress?

• Do you know yourself well enough to stay steady when life gets chaotic?
• Do you have practices in place that keep you grounded amidst the chaos?
• Do you recognize your patterns and tendencies well enough to take responsibility for them – rather than blame outside forces?

Or do you get swept into the day, pulled by other people’s needs, moods, energy and expectations – or even by your own patterns to react and mis-aligned energy?

Here is a truth we often avoid:

Most people don’t fall apart because life is hard.

We fall apart because we haven’t taken responsibility for our life – we hand that over to the outside forces. We fall apart because we haven’t taken the time to learn our own selves.

Not deeply.
Not honestly.
Not in a way that helps us stand strong in the moments that matter.

Know Yourself: The Foundation of Inner Stability

To truly handle stress, you have to know who you are inside the stress.

You must know:

1. Your strengths – what supports you, what you naturally lean toward.
2. Your weaknesses – the places you collapse, shut down, numb out, or become reactive.
3. Your triggers – the stories, fears and emotional wounds that get activated when life doesn’t follow your plan.

Otherwise, we will look outward for the reason (and the stories we keep telling ourselves) that keep us feeling overwhelmed and stressed;

• “This person stressed me out.”
• “This isn’t fair”
• “This situation upset me.”
• “This timing threw me off.”
• “I don’t have enough… time, money, education, control”
• “I am so overwhelmed and stressed because… (fill that blank in with your go-to excuse, blame or shame story)

But the reality is simpler: It’s not the outer world that destabilizes us – it’s our inner unawareness that destabilizes us. And if you are ready to step into a powerful place of responsibility and awareness – you can begin to find your own stability within.

The moment you begin removing the “outer elements” from the equation – other people, circumstances, opinions, expectations – you will discover something liberating: You can choose who you want to be (or start becoming) in any moment.

You can show up grounded.
You can show up conscious.
You can show up prepared.
You can show up as the version of yourself you’ve always wanted to be.

But you can only show up this way – if you take the time to meet yourself every morning before the world meets you. If you are not ready to take responsibility, or accept what is or begin to create a “better version of you” then you will continue to be at the mercy of the outside world and live in a state of stress that can be debilitating.

I’m here to tell you – you do not have to live like this!

How do I know? Because I used to be that person who was not willing to take responsibility for her life. It was easier to shift the attention and blame onto someone else, or a situation – then it was to face my own insecurities and weakness’s. Life is messy, it’s uncomfortable and in its craziness – it will hand you many people or situations to blame. For many years I chose this way of being – because taking responsibility felt way too vulnerability. I chose this way until my seemingly “perfect life” was falling apart and I couldn’t control the outside world or the people around me – I could only control myself and my own opinion of me. To do this – I needed to get to know who I was being (in my case – the victim) and get to know who I was beneath that story. I then decided who I wanted to be. I needed to stand up for myself and accept ME – fully and completely – insecurities, weakness’s and all that rendered me vulnerable and believing I was a victim. Life was mirroring back to me – what I wasn’t willing to face. That is a hard truth to face – but it is true for all of us.

Stand Up for Yourself

Most people think “standing up for yourself” is about confrontation and in some cases, you might have to do that – but I am talking about a deeper sense of understanding yourself – and in order to do that – you must stand up for yourself.

To stand up for yourself means:

• You rise before the day does and honour yourself enough to set the tone – how are you going to show up today?
• You choose your emotional baseline – intentionally choose alignment over automatic reactions.
• You say “I matter” before the world demands pieces of you. Stand in your worth – always!!! 
• You take responsibility for the energy you bring into any space.
• Step into this empowered responsibility with grace – and decide that it doesn’t matter how anyone else shows up. 

Every morning becomes a declaration of your own personal empowerment – and you can do this for yourself in 10 minutes! 10- minutes!!! Give yourself the daily gift of a 10-minute anchoring practice – breath, ground, become present – this is so much deeper than “self-care.” This is self-leadership. And from this place, the world becomes much easier to navigate.

The Human Experience Is Uncomfortable (Even If Your Life Is Beautiful)

We don’t like admitting this, but it’s true:

Even if your life is wonderful…
even if you’re blessed…
even if “nothing is wrong” …

The human experience is still uncomfortable.

Humans lose people they love.
Plans fall apart.
Expectations don’t match reality.
Emotions rise and fall like tides.
The heart aches.
The mind wrestles with uncertainty.
Growth stretches us in ways we didn’t ask for.

This isn’t a sign that something is “wrong.” It’s simply evidence that: You are human – and you are alive. But here’s what makes it all heavier: We forget the other part of who we are: We Are Souls Having a Human Experience – yet many of us live as if we are only human.

We wake up and immediately we enter into our mind. The same mind that holds all the stories of what stresses us out. The mind that holds our to-do-lists, our aches, pains and illness’s. The mind that holds the drama playing out at work or in our family, the mind that tells us we aren’t safe, good enough, smart enough or well enough. We respond from this conditioned mind. We identify with our emotions as truth. We forget that we are more than our fears, pain, stress and expectations.

We forget the Soul. We forget we are Souls having a human experience and this is important to remember because the Soul is where:

• perspective lives
• acceptance lives
• wisdom lives
• peace lives
• trust lives
• resilience lives
• strength lives
• love lives
• solutions live

So, the real art of handling stress becomes this: Can you live as both – a grounded human and an expanded Soul? Can you let your humanity feel the discomfort – while your Soul holds the bigger picture? Can you allow the waves to rise – while remembering you are also the ocean?

This Is Why Your Morning Practice Matters

Your morning grounding isn’t just a routine – it’s the place where your Human and your Soul meet. It is that daily check in with your higher-self. That moment when you can decide to integrate this higher version of yourself into your day. Where your Soul reminds your human self: “You are safe. You’re capable. You can navigate this. You are stronger than you know”

And once you understand yourself on this higher level – you become someone who can ride the wave of whatever life hands you.

Not perfectly. Not without feeling. Not without obstacles. Not without stumbling, or falling and getting yourself back up again… But with steadiness, clarity and self-trust. This is when you will no longer blame anyone else or a situation – you don’t want to live as the victim of your illness, circumstances or situation anymore – you want to take responsibility and show up each day – better than who you showed up as yesterday. This is taking empowering responsibility. This is taking your life and your joy into your own hands!!! And the beautiful thing is – it doesn’t matter what life hands you – you get to take empowering responsibility – no matter what anyone else says, thinks or does.

A Final Invitation

Stress will not disappear. Life will not stop being unpredictable. People will not always act the way you wish they would. But you can become someone who knows yourself well enough to stay centered in the middle of it all. This is the balance of being a human and being a Soul.
This is emotional maturity, it’s inner leadership and it is the real meaning of growth.

And it starts with one simple, powerful choice: Meet yourself every morning before the world meets you.

Know who you are beyond the stories you’ve been telling yourself (or have been told about yourself.) Stand up for your yourself – chose the energy you are going to bring into every situation – do you intent to show up as the victim, the warrior or the hero of your own life?
Show up intentionally, consciously and Soulfully – no matter what the day brings.

YOU set the energy and your intention… and when you do this daily – the energy of the world around you will shift too. Who are you becoming?

Namaste my friends;
Leslie 🙏💙
leslie@wellnessdefined.ca