Stress and the System: Mastering Your Mindset for a Healthier Life
Introduction
Ready to take control of stress and live your best, healthiest life? In this episode, Dr. Orlena dives deep into the relationship between stress and healthy living, revealing her signature Stress Pyramid Framework to help you thrive. Discover:
🌱 The foundational role of mindset in managing stress.
🧠 How to shift from a “negative brain” to a “positive brain” for a calmer, happier life.
💡 Why ingrained habits and systems are key to staying consistent, even when life is "life-ing."
If you're ready to break the cycle of stress and build a life full of energy and resilience, this episode is your roadmap. Tune in now and start transforming your mindset today! 💪✨
Transcription
Dr Orlena (00:00.952)
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena I hope that you are feeling amazing today. We're talking about stress today, which I think is quite apt because this is the third time I have recorded this podcast because the software isn't working and that's really, really frustrating. So I think it is quite funny that we're talking about stress today. Okay, before we dive into stress, before we dive into stress and I explain why we're talking about stress,
I just want to keep you up to date with Dr. Orlina's Eat Smart system, which is my brand new program, which is super exciting. Now you may have heard me talk about it before Christmas. And the idea behind this program is you're somebody who wants to get healthy. You want more energy, you want to lead a long and healthy life. It might be that you want to lose weight as well. And there are two stages to this. There is one, create your system, and two, stick to your system.
And that is exactly what Dr. Orlina's Eat Smart system helps you do. It helps you one, create your system and two, stick to it. Now, it's not actually open at the moment. We've had the first run of people going through it and I was speaking to one of the ladies who went through it yesterday and she loves it. She was saying, yeah, it's really helped me to create a system so that eating healthy feels much easier and I can really notice the mindset shifts so that I'm more focused on
nourishing myself and enjoying myself and it feels something that is sustainable and that I can keep doing which is for me win win win hooray hooray that's exactly the result that I want for people. So I just have to do a few more bits in the background but in a few weeks it will open up to people to be able to go through I'm going to be doing what I call a first wave offer and I will let you know about it so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that. Okay stress
Why are we talking about stress? Isn't it about healthy eating and healthy living? Yes, it is. So if we go back to our system, you're somebody who's thinking, yeah, you know what? I really want to make healthier changes and stick to healthy changes because I want all of these amazing benefits to feel great, to lead my best life, to be healthy, to have a body that I am proud of, a body that I feel great in and great about. How do I make these changes? Well, number one,
Dr Orlena (02:21.484)
you create your system. And number two, you need to stick to your system. It's not about doing something for a few weeks and then going, do you know what, back to the old way. No, it's about making changes that fit with your life that you enjoy. The problem with number two, to stick to it is life is always busy, life-ing, AKA stress. You know what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter if it's something
mundane or something super awful, our brain always has something that is stressful. And it's at those stressful moments that basically everything just falls to pieces. Well, that's not exactly the case actually. If you look at your journey from making changes to where you want to get to, where you really want to get to is what I call solid oak tree habits.
solid oak tree way of doing things. So that actually, even when life is busy, life thing, you still do the same stuff. Why? Because it's so ingrained in what you do. It is just what you normally do. So for example, when it was COVID, I still carried on eating healthily. And the minute I was allowed out of the door, I was there exercising because my body was like, please let me out. I feel like I've been caged up. I need to go and move my body because those are ingrained habits for me.
So what actually happens is you create your system, you have what I call baby acorn habits, and those are the delicate ones that can get derailed when life is busy lifing. And then you get to a stage where those habits are so ingrained because you have been doing them time and time and time, you've been doing them for years and it's just normal. And that just is what feels like life to you. And when you get there, life doesn't actually derail you, but
does derail you at the beginning. And one of the biggest things that I see derails people is stress. So let's have a little think about stress and think what is stress? Now, I really love this definition of stress from the World Health Organization, which says, stress can be defined as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation. Stress is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our life. Everyone experiences stress to some degree,
Dr Orlena (04:44.984)
The way we respond to stress, however, makes a big difference to our overall wellbeing. Now, I love this definition for so many reasons. Number one, what it's basically saying is stress is the way that we think about things and we are always going to be challenged, but we can actually learn from those challenges. And if we can really manage our brain, then we can make it so much easier for ourself. That's my version of what they said.
So let's have a think about this. There are two people who are stuck in a traffic jam and they are gonna be late for work because of the traffic. Now they can't do anything about this. They're stuck in a traffic jam. They can't go backwards. They can't do anything. And one of them is thinking, my goodness, I've got this meeting at nine o'clock and I'm gonna be late and it's gonna be a disaster. And my boss is gonna think this and then it's gonna have this knock on effect and my goodness. The other one is thinking, yeah, this is not great.
I have got that meeting, I actually don't really like that meeting, I'm just gonna make the most of this. I'm gonna listen to Dr. Alina's podcast. You know what, this is fabulous. This is a much better way to start my day. Two people, exactly the same situation, one of them super stressed and all the consequences of things that happen to it, the other one accepting it and just dealing with life. Which one do you think is going to have an easier day? And the answer is,
The second one, well, we don't know obviously, but we suspect the second one. So the way I like to think about stress is it's kind of a pyramid. And at the bottom of the pyramid, the foundation is how we think about things. And then coming up, you've got other bits that are important in your stress management tools. So on top of your pyramid, the next step up is
having healthy habits. So these default things that we do that are just default. So for me, that would be exercise and how I eat, just default habits. even though COVID happened and it was not great for everybody, those were the things that I still did because I had those habits and they're just things that I keep doing. Now, on top of that, you've got your systems, habits and routines. How does that make any difference?
Dr Orlena (07:07.822)
Well, take for example, it's Monday morning, you've got kids, they're getting ready for school. my goodness, I've forgotten my swimming stuff. my goodness, I haven't done my homework. my goodness, where are my trousers? Where are my shoes? Where is all of this? That is stress. That's gonna add stress to your bucket. Now, you can change that with a good system. So, Sunday evening, I don't know, this system doesn't happen in my house. Does it happen in anybody's house? Sunday evening, get your stuff ready, despite the fact that I tell my kids every single day.
Get your stuff ready the night before. They never do. Anyhow, that's another story. You can see how having a good system can really help. And that is the bit that we work on in Dr. Orlina's Eat Smart system. But that bit can include so many things like how you eat. If you have got a good system, then you don't have to worry about what's for dinner because your system will take care of it. The same with exercise. If you've got a good system, then it's just easy to do. Now,
On top of that, we have got what I call emergency tools and emergency tools are very good in emergencies, but you're much better off looking at the bottom and changing the bottom and thinking, how can I change how I think about things rather than having my emergency tools? So your emergency tools might be things like, okay, I'm gonna put my hand on my chest and I'm gonna take three deep breaths to stop myself going down that rabbit hole of catastrophe.
I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna take a moment, I'm gonna center myself and I'm gonna deal with this situation. So just to recap the pyramid, at the bottom, how we think about things, on top of that, habits that are ingrained, things that you do all the time, on top of that, your system, and then on top of that, your emergency tools. And as a side note, your emergency tools can be different things. It doesn't have to be deep breathing. I personally think deep breathing is a really good one for various reasons. Number one,
You can do it anywhere and nobody's going to look at you strangely for breathing. And number two, if you really know how to do deep breathing, you can slow your heart rate down as well, which will really have an impact. But some people like to do movements. Some people like to incorporate, I don't know, jumping jacks or running or going up and down the steps, going for a walk. I mean, it depends on what the situation is. But the thing about the emergency tool is you need to have trained yourself to do it when you're not stressed, when you're not in that emergency because
Dr Orlena (09:33.058)
When you're in that emergency, that's not the time to think, I know there's a different way of doing this. Normally we're just on autopilot and we just do whatever is going on. So you need to really think about the deep breathing or the jumping jacks or whatever at a time when you're feeling relaxed and go, this is part of my tools. I'm going to train myself with these tools. Okay. Going back to the foundation, how do we think about things? And one of the problems that I see with this is
how we think about things, we live in our brain, yeah? So we're thinking about things and we're kind of thinking, okay, the way I think about things is not great because it's leading to all of this stress, but that's how my brain thinks about things. How do I use my brain to retrain my brain to think about things in a different way? So you can see how this is more difficult then, how can I use my brain to solve a problem of moving a bucket of earth from there to there? Okay, I can think it out, but it's not about...
yourself and about changing the actual tool and I think that gets a little bit confusing. So there's so much we can talk about here but I'm just going to give you some of my top tips. Number one, self-awareness is the first bit because we often don't realise. We're so busy leading our lives that we don't really realise like actually it's the way I'm thinking about things. I remember having one of these epiphany moments. I think it's a bit like a
peeling onions, do know what I mean? You think, okay, I can see that when I'm super cross and angry, I can think about things in a different way. And then, okay, I'm a little bit irritated. Ooh, another layer of the onion. I can think about things in another way. So I remember having a friend to stay in our house and long story short, I was a little bit irritated. I sat there thinking, my goodness, I'm a little bit irritated because...
He was cooking sausages and making so much smoke and me thinking, I just want to sit here for five minutes. I don't like smoke. I don't like sausages. A little bit of irritation. And then me thinking, my goodness, that's negative brain. I'll tell you about negative brain in a second. thinking, I could change how I think about this. How can I look at this in a more positive light and think, do you know what? Actually, it's just a little irritation in seeing your friend who's a great friend who you don't get to see very much. And they've made the effort to come all the way out here and see you. And on top of that,
Dr Orlena (11:55.266)
He has a son who has lots of difficulties and it's difficult for him to go on holiday. So this is an amazing way of you being able to give him a gift of being able to come on holiday together. So many different ways of thinking about it. And then suddenly you just go, who cares about a little bit of smoke? It's not a big deal. And I think that layer of thought process starts with the self-awareness. my goodness, I could think about this in a different way, short horror. How am I gonna think about it? So,
Positive and negative brain. I love the idea of positive and negative brain. And I think it can be really easy to know what negative brain is. Your negative brain basically goes, I don't like it, I don't like it. And then it has loads of reasons why I don't it, I don't it because of this, and I don't like it because of that. And here's another thing. And one of the things to remember about our negative brain is it's very blinkered. It's like got tunnel vision. And when you're in negative brain, all you can think about is negative brain.
That's great when you're running away from a tiger. You don't want to get distracted when you're running away from a tiger. You don't want to be running away from the tiger and go, look at that pretty flower. I wonder about, look at that cloud up there. Clearly, we don't want that. But most of the stuff that we get triggered about is not running away from a tiger.
So being able to see this tunnel vision, that self-awareness piece of, my goodness, my brain is stuck in negative brain and I keep going over this negative story over and over and over again. So negative brain versus positive brain. Positive brain accepts things. Positive brain may not always accept things. If it doesn't, it finds gifts in them. And it is a muscle to train yourself from negative brain to positive brain. But for me, it's a really,
fabulous foundation of being able to see or system of being able to see how the world works and be able to understand, my goodness, I'm in negative brain or that other person is in negative brain. And therefore I feel stressed because they're in negative brain and mirror neurons. Mirror neurons account for a lot of stress, I think, in all different circumstances. So mirror neurons are those neurons where we basically mirror somebody else's emotions when you hear somebody laugh.
Dr Orlena (14:14.21)
you join in and you start laughing. But mostly it's about stress and how stress ricochets around households or work environments. So I used to work for the NHS and it's a high stress environment. It's not just a high stress environment because big decisions are being made there often even the mundane, like I've got a cough or a cold, but people are so busy and then they get stressed. And then that stress is contagious. They pass it on to somebody else. So
the nurses in the A &E are stressed and then the nurses in the pediatric department are stressed and then all the doctors are stressed. Now I'm not blaming these people, I'm just saying, like giving an example. But that's basically what happens and then we find ourselves stressed because we see other people stressed and we take that stress on thanks to those mirror neurons. But being aware of it really helps you to protect yourself and go, I can see they're in negative brain, but that doesn't mean I want to be in negative brain. So.
Going back to negative brain, negative brain accepts a situation. I'm stuck in traffic. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm just going to accept this situation. And then you stop stressing about it. There's no point in having all those negative thoughts about my boss is going to be cross. This isn't going to happen and blah, blah, blah. You just have to deal with those things. Or negative brain will see some gifts in the situation. So
I get to listen to Dr. Alina's podcast or I'm training myself to stay calm. I'm training myself to be in positive brain. Now, often I feel it can be really difficult depending on the situation, it can be really difficult to see a positive in any negative situation. Examples I think of when my son was unwell, he had something called functional neurological disorder. It was awful. He was really unwell. We didn't know what was wrong with him. He had six months of school. Wasn't great. And at the time,
I used this system to help me get through it, but I didn't get to the stage where I was like, yeah, this is great. I really love this. This is the best thing that's happened to us. No, I can see some gifts that came out of it and now thankfully he is so much better, but sometimes it can be difficult. Another example, my children have some awful genetic eye condition and right now I'm finding it difficult to go, yeah, this is great. But what I can do is look back in my life and think about times that felt very challenging at the time and at the time thinking,
Dr Orlena (16:38.99)
Oh my goodness, this feels awful. An example I can think of. When I was, how old was I? 19, I think. And I applied to get into medical school. Now I have to confess, I'd already taken a year out, so I just kind of wrote the form by myself and sent it off and I went for an interview and it was great and I didn't have any work experience. And they said to me, no, you can't come in. So I went to my work experience and I said to the doctor, nah, I didn't get in. And he said to me, well, if you really want to do it, you will go back and you'll do it again.
actually it turned out they offered me place for the following year. So it all sorted itself out, but at the time it just felt like the world's biggest disaster, such an awful challenge. My world had been thrown apart because I'd made this big gamble. I'd thrown away a place at university to go and do this other place at university. But now when I look back on it, I think actually it gave me so many other valuable insights that I wouldn't have had.
For example, actually, if you want to go and study something like medicine, you have to be quite clear that that's what you want to do as opposed to do it on a whim. If you really want something, you're gonna do what it takes to get there. And I think that was a really valuable lesson that I learned from that experience. Although at the time, as I say, it was all doom and gloom. So being able to look back and think, okay, there have been times in my life when it all felt awful. I couldn't see any gifts in the situation.
Perhaps that is one of them. Now, I'm open to gifts coming out of this situation. I can't see them, but perhaps they are there. So this bottom piece, the how we think about things is where I recommend you do lots of work because it will change your life, not just in terms of healthy eating and exercise, but in terms of everything, basically. If you can learn to navigate your world, all the stresses within your world,
and see it from a place of, accept this and okay, how can I move forwards in this as opposed to all of those negative thoughts, which what does the stress do? What are those negative thoughts doing? Just making it more difficult for you. And not only that, they're having negative effects on your body in terms of they're gonna increase your inflammation and your stress hormones. If you want to lose weight, my goodness, they're making it so difficult for you to lose weight. They're making it difficult for you to sleep. It's just this.
Dr Orlena (19:01.464)
what I call going down the negative plug hole, as opposed to building up and building up and building up. So this piece is a really integral piece of healthy living. Healthy living is not just about looking after your body. Obviously, that's a really important part of it. But healthy living is really about looking after your mind too. And part of your mind is how you look at the world and how you see the world and not getting stuck in negative brain and stress, stress, stress.
So I hope you have found this helpful. Hooray! I've actually managed to record it. Fingers crossed that it works and that I can send out all the bits and pieces. Have a fabulous week and I will see you next week. Bye bye.
