Anyway, thank you for joining this session. It's a pleasure of mine to introduce our next speaker, Christy Archuleta. So Christy is an internationally recognized and award-winning professor in financial planning at the University of Georgia. She's also a licensed marriage and family therapist and a certified financial therapist, level one. So she's known all over the world for her contributions to the development of financial therapy. She's a co-founder of the Financial Therapy Association, the Journal of Financial Therapy, and also she's the co-founder of the nation's first academic financial therapy program. So I'm very excited to be here at this session. I think I'm gonna learn a lot. So everybody, please welcome me. I mean, please help me. Welcome, Azair. Welcome, Azair. Thank you very much. Well, you're far too kind, far too kind. You can also welcome Christy to the stage. Thank you. Thank you. That was great. That was like the best introduction ever. Well, I about said good morning. It's not good morning. It's good afternoon. So maybe I am the one that needs a nap. I don't know. So I'm guessing if you're here, you might look like this. This is actually a picture of me this morning. Because I didn't sleep very well after bragging to my colleagues, like I've been sleeping so well since I've been here. I'm kid-free, no distractions. And then I wake up like at 3 a.m. this morning. And then I get a call from my sister that says, mom called the ambulance and she is in the ER right now. And I'm like, what? Anyway, so that's how my day started. My mom is doing great now. She's at home. She's fine. We don't really know what was wrong with her, but nothing that they thought that they should keep her in there any longer. So I've been a little stressed today, just a little bit, but it's gonna be good. So this all, first of all, while I'm talking, I want you to go ahead and do this. If you've ever been to a presentation I've done before, I love being interactive. And this is one of the ways that we're gonna be a little interactive today is to participate in this polling thing. So while you're doing that, you can either text ChristyArchill496 to that number, or you can just go to this website. But while you're doing that, I'll tell you a little bit why this session is what this session is. So probably for the last year, I was noticing and hearing lots of advisors when I come to NAPFA talk about how stressed they were. A year ago in Atlanta, I did a session on burnout and way more people showed up than I had anticipated, which is always nice when you have a lot of people in the room and they're actually listening and look like they care. And I thought, I kept hearing these things about just stress and stress and anxiety. And I thought, I really feel like we need to have some sort of support group for advisors around stress because this is a real issue that all of you are dealing with. You carry very heavy burdens of working with people and their emotions. And that can be a really difficult place to be in. So that in and of itself can be very stressful. Plus, I'm guessing that most of you have lives outside of work and those can be stressful. And then you mix them all together and try to balance work and family. And so it just keeps getting more stressful. So I thought, well, let's just talk about stress with the people who want to talk about stress. Okay, I'm gonna do a quick assessment of all of you before we get, you have a few more minutes to do this. I like to try to do some different kinds of activities. So, you know, it is after lunch. So we need to keep you engaged. So I have a couple of different things planned but based upon the responses that I get will determine how we kind of do some of those things for the rest of our time together. So first of all, how many of you like interactive activities? Kind of experiential, okay. How many of you that like the interactive things like to do it but you don't want to talk to anyone else while you're doing it? Okay. How many of you like to talk to other people while you're doing interactive things? Okay, all right. How many of you just want me to sit up here and talk so you don't have to do anything? Okay, I appreciate honest answers. I mean, that's me usually. I'm probably doing something else but I'm listening and I don't really want to participate in your activity. But that's when I learn the most is when I actually participate in the activity. So I have a little bit of something for everyone. Those who like to be interactive with other people, those who like to be interactive with just themselves and those who just want to sit there and listen. That's great. Okay. This is our first interactive activity is this polling thing. But you don't have to talk to your neighbor. So you might, somebody's already filled this out so these are our overachievers here. What are your best hopes for our time together today? And I'm gonna hope that I can at least address some of them. Okay, new techniques, learn how to ask combat. Gain understanding, better handle stress. Okay, this stuff is really helpful for me and hopefully it helps the rest of you to see that you're all, you all have a common goal. You all want to learn something new. You're all in a position of feeling stressed and want to learn some new tools. So hopefully you will hear some new tools but you're also gonna hear some things you've heard before, right? Because it's helpful to be reminded of those things that we need to be doing but maybe we quit doing or maybe we need to figure out how to be more successful at doing those things. So we're gonna talk about some of those fundamental things and also how we can add some new things. Okay, this is great and I love the participation but isn't this fun? This is like live. Okay, we're gonna move on to the next thing. So they did make me have learning objectives. Those are here, you read those and now who cares? Who cares that you are stressed? Anyone want to volunteer? Who cares that you're stressed? Your spouse, okay, spouses, partners. Children, pets, yes. Your pets want to comfort you. Yes, but they know that. Coworkers, therapists, that's right. We got some therapists we can refer you to afterwards. I heard a saying like 5% will care about you being stressed and the other 95 will be glad that you're stressed. Because you feel like they do, right? Yeah, I like that saying, it's probably pretty accurate. Yeah, I haven't heard one thing though. I care. You care? Oh, thank you. Clients. Clients, thank you, JJ. Clients care that you're stressed. They care that you're stressed. They can actually feel your stress even though you're trying not to show it. And that shows up in a lot of different ways in which you might not even think about that you're presenting to them. But do you know when your family members are stressed even if they don't say anything? Do you know when friends are stressed even though they don't say anything? Your clients know when you're stressed. They can feel it. Actually, some of my colleagues did a study several years ago about planner stress. And what they found out, they did like sweat conductance, like when your hands are cold and clammy and they did heart racing. So they measured heartbeat. And what they learned was that as the planner stress increased, the client stress increased. So your stress matters. It matters a lot. And according to some statistics, you're all very stressed. So I cheated and I used ChatGPT, which I tell my students they're not allowed to use. But I wanted to see what it would tell me. And I think it came up with most of the studies that I could find that had been done. So this was a 2020 study done by the CFP board, which surveyed 1,300 financial planners in the US. And 81%, so this is 2020, but I think we're all kind of at that same level of stress potentially. We've gone back to normal. I don't know about you, but normal feels like it's on speed or something. But 81% reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress related to their job. An FPA survey in 2019 found that 83% of financial planners reported experiencing stress related to their job. And CFA Institute found that 70% of investment professionals experienced high levels of stress. And 60% reported that stress was negatively impacted to their job performance. So these are not small numbers. And I don't think if we did that study right now, those numbers are gonna change all that much. This is a really good size room and there's lots of you in here. So that tells me that this is an issue that we need to talk about. So just in case you're wondering, this is from the slides this morning, which is why they're blurry, because I was standing in the back of the room trying to take a picture. And plus, I'm not great at taking pictures. But this is what the speaker this morning put up here. So the things that stuck out for me was being known for good financial planning to reduce stress. He's talking about client stress. This is what the clients want. They want their stress to be reduced, but we have to work on ourselves so that we can help our clients reduce stress. We wanna make stress reduction a key theme in our messaging. But if you're stressed all the time, what's that gonna do to the messaging? How does that shift the messaging? How does that shift the language for how we talk about stress, how we talk about clients meeting goals, how we approach or behave with our clients? And then this is also a slide from this morning. So I think this was one of the last slides that he showed, but relationships, health and well-being, social standing, positive environments, patience, personal growth, all of this matters. And all of this can be connected to our stress. So just in case you wanted to know like why you needed to care, don't take it from me. Take it from the guy who was talking earlier today. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about stress and anxiety. So we have two different concepts. They're often used interchangeably, but they're not interchangeable terms. So we have stress, which is a response to an external stressor. So I get the call from my sister this morning. Mom has been taken by ambulance to the hospital. Okay, that's a little stressful, right? But when I heard mom was at home and she's taking, she's now ready for a nap, stress immediately went down, right? Same, deadlines, family conflict, things that we respond to, we respond to stressors. So it's an external stressor that we're responding. When you take away the stressor, the stress immediately goes down. Anxiety is something different. Anxiety and stress kind of work together, but anxiety is something that's kind of constantly happening, it's persistent. It doesn't go away just because the stressor goes away. And so many of us who are perfectionists might also have some anxious tendencies about us or anxious characteristics about us. If we're planners, room full of planners, there might be some anxious characteristics, but it's important to know what it is that you're dealing with so that you can understand how to approach it. There's a lot of similarities in how they show up and how they look and how you manage that. But if a stressor is going away, but you're still worrying and there's constant worrying, you might be dealing with something called anxiety. If it's the stressor that goes away and the stress is reduced or those feelings are reduced, then you're dealing with stress, okay? So is all stress bad? So I'm a professor at the University of Georgia. This is our tennis team. And what do you think they're doing here? It's kind of a weird picture. It's technically a video, but I'm using it as a picture. They're huddling, what are they doing? Yes, they're getting ready to do this little UGA chant and like wolf at the end. I'm not a graduate of the UGA. And it's always been very awkward when you call the dogs and you go, woof, woof, woof, woof. I'm not gonna, I have a microphone on. I'm not gonna expose you to that. I've never seen Ted Lasso, but possibly. But not all stress is bad, right? So there is something called eustress, which is positive stress that keeps us motivated to do some things, right? So we wanna have a little stress. So that's what they're doing. They're getting hyped up to go play their tennis match. So I don't wanna speak in terms that all stress is bad. That's tends to be how we think about stress. And we don't really think about it until it becomes problematic. But there's good stress too. And I want you to be able to separate that out from the stress that is really bogging you down. Okay, I'm a therapist and a professor. I like assessments. Let's take some. Okay, I'm hoping that you can see this. And I'm hoping that you have something either you can write on, or you can like just take notes on like your note app in your phone. And so all this is, I will read these off just in case you can't see them. This is an assessment. It's 10 questions. It's assessing your stress level. And you are going to write one of the responses for each of these items. You're going to answer zero for never, one for almost never, two for sometimes, three for fairly often, and four for very often, okay? So listen carefully as I read these off because some of them are not going to be scored quite the way that you think they might be scored. Okay, in the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened to you unexpectedly? So in the last month, how often have you been upset because something that happened unexpectedly? So responses are zero for never, one almost never, two sometimes, three fairly often, and four very often, okay? So just write down your number. And then we're going to add up the numbers at the end. Number two, in the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life? Zero for never, one almost never, two sometimes, three fairly often, and four very often. Okay, the third item. In the last month, how often have you felt nervous or stressed? Number four, in the last month, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems? I'll read that again. In the last month, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your personal problems? Zero for never, one almost never, two sometimes, three fairly often, and four very often. Okay, the fifth item is, in the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way? So in the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way? Number six, in the last month, how often have you found you could not cope with all of the things that you had to do? So in the last month, how often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do? Okay, number seven, in the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your life? So in the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your life? Number eight, in the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things? In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things? Number nine, in the last month, how often have you been angered because of the things that happened that were outside of your control? So in the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that happened that were outside of your control? And number 10, in the last month, how often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them? So the last item is in the last month, how often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could not overcome them? Okay, so you should have 10 numbers now. And so for items four, five, seven, and eight, so mark four, five, seven, and eight, you're gonna reverse code those. So if you answered 0, give yourself 4 points instead. If you answer, I know, you didn't know there was going to be any math. Can I hire a cancel advisor for help? Yes, I can recommend several in this room. There's about 50 of them, I think. 1 equals 3, 2 equals 2. If you answered 3, give yourself 1 point. If you answered 4, give yourself 0 points. So only on items 4, 5, 7, and 8. Okay? Now once you've done that, can you all see that on this side? Okay. So once you've reversed those four items, then add your numbers up. I promise I won't check your work. Okay. So when you're ready and you have a tallied score, mark A if your answer was 0 to 13, B if it's 14 to 26, or C if it's 27 to 40. No one has any idea who's answering this. I have no idea who you are if you're answering this. I can't tell that. So just know that all of your responses are completely anonymous. But I want us to look at where our stress really is. So this is low stress, this is moderate stress, and this is very high stress. Many of you might have walked in here thinking, I have really high stress. But maybe after I took that, I found out that I was a little bit more on the moderate side. Maybe some of you are like, I thought I was like moderate, but really I'm low. Or I thought I was low and I'm really high. Yes? Can you just text your response, or do you have to go to the website? No, you should be able just to be in there. You're just texting your response. So you should just be able to put A in there, or B, or C, if you texted to that number. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's helpful. I see. No need to create a login. No, no login needed. So once I flip to these, then they're automatically on for all of you to access. OK, so we have a lot of people right in here. So I think this is helpful as you look around the room to know you're not alone. We're all experiencing some level of stress. So how might you know that you have symptoms of stress? So these are pretty common symptoms that you might see. You might see irritability. Anybody ever get irritable? Never, never, never irritable. Or angry, or you anger easily. Maybe anger more easily than normal. You feel tired. It doesn't matter how much you're angry. You feel tired. It doesn't matter how much sleep you get. You're still tired all the time. You might have muscle pain, like your neck and your shoulders get real tense, and you feel like you're walking around like this. So you can have muscle pain in any part of your body, but it's just going to work itself up or down, right? So it's all connected. You might have digestive troubles. This is not what you thought you were coming to talk about at a NAPFA conference, was your digestive troubles. But that is a sign of stress. So doctors, what they see in their offices, 80% are dealing with some sort of stress. They're clients, because they're showing up with these physical concerns, but they're really related back to mental health concerns. A lot are due to stress. You might have difficulty sleeping, going to sleep, or staying asleep once you get to sleep. So what do we do when we're stressed? So first of all, I want to recognize that everybody here, you're here for a reason. Either you feel like that first picture that I showed you with the crazy hair mouse, or you know someone else who seems really stressed, and you want to know how to respond to their stress. But whatever reason you're here, what you're not doing is avoiding that it's there, because that is a way to deal with it, is to flee, flight. I'm running away from the stress. I'm just going to avoid it. I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to think about it. What's wrong with that person who seems irritable all the time? They might just be dealing with some stress. So there are a couple of responses that our body automatically responds to. Like physiologically, these are our responses, and we're all going to respond just a little bit differently. But this is our brain telling us to fight, flight, flee, run away, or tend and befriend. Like I feel stressed, and I see someone else feel stressed, so I might go and try to comfort them, or tend and befriend them, make nice with them, right? You might look for safety through social engagements. You might just take no action. You act like you're bored. You want nothing to do with it. Or you find yourself being helpless or freezing. Like, I don't know what to do. Like, I have all of these deadlines. I don't even know where to start. And so you just sit there, and you're like, an hour goes by, and you're like, I didn't get done what I thought I was going to get done today because I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know what to do next. So that kind of is over there on that helplessness and freezing side. So there's a lot of different types of responses we physiologically have. And when we can understand what it is that we're doing in response to that, then we can start to recognize what can I do about that. So I want you to think about not these stress responses necessarily, but what you're responding to. So if you've had any of these symptoms or you find yourself responding, you're responding to something. You're responding to that stressor. What is that stressor? What's that primary stressor that you're dealing with right now? So you might have 10 stressors. I already listed a few stressors this morning, but what's my primary stressor that I feel like I'm dealing with most often? Go ahead and put that up here. Again, completely anonymous. The kids, meetings, too much work, health and kids, too many tasks, money, work, my boss. I hope that boss isn't in here. Employee management, balancing work and school and social life, extended family issues. These are real stressors that everybody's dealing with, very real stressors. And we can see many of them are getting repeated. And so that means that you're dealing with other people in this room are dealing with the same kinds of stressors. Thank you all for sharing these stressors. Might be hard to think, what am I going to admit is my biggest stressor? Like, I feel guilty sometimes, like if I put my kids up here, but sometimes they are my biggest stressor, right? Someone has a sick child and you're at this conference, balancing, not enough time, fitting everything in. So much is going on all of the time. So I think it's in text announcing a problem. That's hilarious. Multiple people. So these are real things. And I just want to acknowledge that this is a huge step in recognizing how to deal with my stresses, knowing what is that primary stressor that I'm dealing with, and admitting to that. Now, you're admitting to a whole group of people that have no idea what Stephanie put down, have no idea. She might not have put anything down. But if she did, she's got that up here and she recognizes this is what my primary stressor is right now. And stressors change from day to day. Okay. So now I want to know, before we've talked about any management tools, what are you doing to manage your stress? What's your primary way in which you're managing your stress? They can be good tools, they can be bad tools. But what is the primary way you're dealing with it? Eating, therapy, journaling, coffee. We're being enabled here at the NAFA conference with our coffee intake. Drinking, exercise, yoga and red wine, Netflix, morning routine, wine, tennis. Do you watch the Georgia tennis team? I don't even know if they're good or not. I do follow some Georgia sports. Like, you cannot not follow Georgia football, right? We follow Georgia softball, Georgia gymnastics. Sleep and exercise, walking. Okay. So we've got some really great management tools on how you're managing your stress currently. Or badly, reading a book. And some of these things are like avoidance, right? Like, I don't want to. Now we're getting some variety here, okay? Turned off iMessages at night. So some of our mechanisms are working. Some of them have worked, but they don't seem to be working very well anymore. And sometimes we need a different mechanism, right? We need a different strategy. So you might see some up here, like, I've tried that, that didn't work. Or I'm doing that also, and that doesn't either seem to be working either. Or, hey, that one is working. Like, the yoga, that's really working. Waking up early. Sacrificing personal time to do work. Yoga. White—I don't know what white knuckling means, and I don't want to ask because I don't want someone to— I don't know what that means, though. Hunker down. Okay, I understand. Hunker down. Okay, white knuckling. That's a new term for me. With a spirit wheel. Yeah, oh, gotcha. Ah, okay. I was thinking, like, you're, like, pounding something. Yelling at people. The above. Shedding obligations. Somatics. Isn't this fun? Like, you're like, hey, I've got some new ideas. I'm going to knuckle down, or white knuckle. Okay, so we're going to talk about some stress management tools in a little bit. But remember how we talked about stress and anxiety. How they look similar. How you might actually be coping with them similarly. But guess what? I'm a professor and a therapist, and I like assessments. So this is a pretty common anxiety disorder assessment tool that therapists commonly use. So this is looking at generalized anxiety disorder symptoms. So it does not mean that if you say, I have any of these symptoms, I automatically have a generalized anxiety disorder. That is not what this is saying. It's really going to put you in a low, medium, higher level anxiety symptoms. And this is when you might want to think about seeking outside help. Okay, so again, I wish that it were bigger, but it's trying to get it all on the same page. So do the same thing. Paper, pencil out. Get your phone out. However you were taking notes. This is only seven items. The scoring of it is going to be zero for not at all. One is for several days. So several days. We're looking over the past two weeks. So zero, not at all. One, several days. Two means more than half the day. So more than one week. Okay, and then three is going to be nearly every day. So you're going to have a score from zero to three for each of these items. And now we're looking at the past two weeks. Okay, so this is a little bit more myopic view. Okay, the first one is over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems? The first one being feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge. So thinking about over the last two weeks, how often have you felt nervous, anxious, or on edge? Not at all, zero. One is several days. Two is more than half the days. And three is nearly every day. All right, number two. Not being able to stop or control your worrying. So two is over the last two weeks, how often have you not been able to stop or control your worrying? Zero, not at all. One, several days. Two is more than half the days. And three is nearly every day. Okay, third item. Over the last two weeks, how often have you felt like you were worrying too much about different things? Zero, not at all. One, several days. Two, more than half the days. Three, nearly every day. Number four is trouble relaxing. How often over the last two weeks have you had trouble relaxing? So zero, one, two, or three. Number five is being so restless that it is hard to sit still. So over the past two weeks, how often have you been so restless that it's hard to sit still? Only two more. Number six is becoming easily annoyed or irritable. So over the past two weeks, how often have you become easily annoyed or irritable? Zero, not at all. One, several days. Two, more than half the days. Three, nearly every day. Number seven, so this is the last one. Over the past two weeks, how often have you felt afraid as if something awful might happen? Zero, not at all. One, several days. Two, more than half the days. Three, nearly every day. Okay, so now what you're going to do, there's no reverse coding in this one, so you're just going to add these up. And you should end up with a score that's between zero and 21. And then we're going to do the same thing here. So your anxiety score is between one of these. So A is zero to four, B, five to nine, 10 to 14 is C, and above 15 is D. And no shame as to what your score is. Should have set my ground rules that this is a no-judgment zone. What I want you to do is be real with yourself. You can be real with yourself without even telling anyone about it. Okay, so kind of think about where you saw yourself here. And then if we look at this breakdown, zero to four is minimal anxiety, five to nine is mild, and 10 to 14 is moderate, and higher than 15 is severe. So we're going to talk about making some recommendations when your stress is really, really high or when your anxiety is really, really high. So anxiety, we've only looked at the past two weeks. But if you know this is something that you have struggled with over the past six months, then that's probably a pretty good indicator that this is probably something that needs to be treated with another professional, a mental health professional, okay? So somewhere in this moderate and definitely severe is probably an opportunity to think about seeking some outside help if you have not yet. Okay, so symptoms of anxiety look very similar to symptoms of stress. They show up very similarly, but there are some additional things. So we talked about there's worrying. So you might have said, I feel like I'm worrying all the time. Every day I'm worrying. So there's a lot of worrying. It's not just worrying about when a stressor happens. I'm not just worried about that. There's an internal reaction of fear or apprehension. So I can't get rid of this fear or apprehension that I have about something. There's difficulty concentrating at school or work. I'm feeling anxious or nervous all of the time. I might also feel irritable, just like I do when I feel stressed. I might also feel fatigued, have that muscle tension, and again, more digestive issues. So when is this problematic? So we saw you have a score at least. So these are not like, you're not diagnosing yourself. But what you have done is indicated your level of stress that you're dealing with right now and your level of anxiety that you have right now. And it's important to understand where you are so that you can look to where you need to go, okay? But when do I know that some of these things are problematic? Are they getting in the way of relationships, either at work, at school, at home? So are you having difficulty maintaining your personal relationships and your work relationships? Is it getting in the way of that? Do you find yourself withdrawing and feeling like you just want to be in your room all of the time without any interruptions? Sometimes you need that. You need that recharge time. But if you're finding yourself that you're wanting to be isolated and withdrawing from people that you normally interact with, that's a good indicator that this is probably becoming problematic. Your performance at work or school is decreasing. You're learning at a level that it's expected for your age and intelligence, so you're not able to learn the same way that you might have otherwise, so you might be absorbing information differently. So even just thinking about, you're learning right now, right? You think, I'm not in school anymore. But you're learning at this conference, and are you showing up differently at this conference than you have to other conferences, to other sessions that you've been to previously? And that you're not participating in activities that are important to you, because you've decided I don't have time for that, I don't want to do that, but this is something I normally really enjoy. I normally really enjoy playing pickleball. I don't actually have any idea how to play pickleball, but maybe that's something that I love to do, but I find myself not doing that. I know that's important for me, I know that's important exercise, that's important social time with friends, and it makes me feel good, but I just don't have it in me to go. So when you start doing things differently in a way that is excluding yourself from your normal activities, that you're not engaging with relationships, and that work or school or whatever it is that you're doing is decreasing, diminishing, the quality of your work is decreasing, those are pretty good indicators that this is to a point that it's time to seek some outside help. So what happens when we are constantly faced with stress or anxiety, we're not dealing with it, or we're utilizing coping mechanisms that are not working. So what you listed earlier, like how you're managing your stress, those are all coping mechanisms that you use. When we utilize coping mechanisms that are in misalignment or that are not working very well for the stress that we're dealing with, it leads to burnout. I did a whole presentation on burnout a year ago, like I told you earlier. So that's a whole separate conversation, but some of you might have been dealing with this for so long, you are at a stage of burnout, and so you're feeling completely exhausted absolutely all the time. You are cynical, like everything is just not good, and you feel ineffective. So these three things is really what we talk about in terms of burnout. And burnout is typically talked about as a work issue, but we know there's that bleed over when we go home, we take work home with us, we take our stress home that we're dealing with this, with our families, and it's hard to separate that, and so that burnout shows up at home. Or we bring our family problems, even though you're not supposed to bring family problems to the office, if your mom is in the hospital, that's pretty difficult to separate that completely from what you're doing, right? So we can't completely separate things, right? So we're bringing the home stuff to work. And I want to say that if you scored high in any of these areas or scored moderately in any of these areas, or you're feeling these three things, it's not a sign of weakness. This is a first step of showing your strength is recognizing this and showing this to yourself. So what do we do? There's lots of things, but I'm going to pay special attention right here to healthy eating and sleeping habits right here, and exercise, okay? These are like time value of money for financial planners, okay? It's like the foundation to your house that you have built. If you are not doing those three things, your house doesn't have a structure to stand up on, okay? So it doesn't mean that you have to skip all the sweets because, hey, let's face it. I mean, those are helpful sometimes, right? But getting enough sleep, getting enough rest is a huge, huge thing. So figuring out how to do that and then exercising, which helps with our eating and sleeping habits as well, okay? So I cannot stress these enough. These are like foundational for stress management, anxiety management, depression management, all of those things, they're key. Then there's breathing exercises, mindfulness techniques. Does anybody do those? Anybody ever tried some of those? Okay, so there's a few of you that have done that. I want to take just a moment to actually do a little exercise, okay? I used to think these are very hokey, but not, sorry, Virginia Tech fans, that probably wasn't. Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. You just did it in a positive way, right? Right. Right. I wasn't even associating that until I was thinking, oh gosh, Dave's in the room. I didn't even put them together. So let's take a moment. I want you to close your eyes. Just bear with me here. Close your eyes. And I want you to basically just tell yourself to let your thoughts leave. Just kind of let your thoughts leave. I want you to concentrate on your breathing. Want you to feel yourself breathe in and then take a deep breath out. Okay, and take one more deep breath in and then let it out slowly. Okay, we're going to do that one more time. This time I'm going to count to five as we breathe in and breathe out. So take a big deep breath in, one, two, three, four, five. And breathe out, one, two, three, four, five. Now I want you to think about your feet. I want you to concentrate on your feet and I want you to feel your feet relax. And then I want you to take another deep breath in, this time to three. Count to breath, one, two, three, as you breathe in and then let it out at the same pace. I want you to think about your knees, focus in on your knees and allow your knees to just kind of fall to the side so your legs can relax. Then I want you to take another deep breath, take a deep breath in, and then as you breathe out, just let your legs relax completely. I want you to think about your hips, take a big deep breath in. And as you breathe out, let those hips relax in your chair. Take another deep breath in and I want you to feel your chest and your stomach just relax as you let that breath out. Now feel your shoulders, I want you to take another deep breath in and then let your shoulders fall, let your neck relax. As you feel your neck and shoulders relax, feel your arms dangle to the sides. Let go of all that tension that you're feeling. And then in your last breath, I want you to concentrate on your face and the top of your head. I want you to take a big deep breath in and as you let it out, just let your face fall and relax. Now take one more deep breath, breathe in and then breathe out and just let it go. And then I want you to open your eyes. How do you feel? Do you feel a little bit more relaxed? That took less than two minutes. And hopefully you feel like you're in a slightly different place than you were before. That's the power of your mind working, the power of your mind taking in those breaths, letting them out. Some other things that are really helpful, those are some tools that you can use that are short where they can take a longer amount of time are some journaling exercises. We had a little bit more time, we might do a little one in a little bit, but journaling, like just taking a few moments at the beginning of your day, does anyone, somebody said that they did journaling. Are there others that do journaling that can be really, really helpful? You are either doing it maybe in the morning or in the evening before you go to bed. Maybe you're doing it at lunchtime just to kind of gather your thoughts. You can journal about anything. You can journal about things that help you restructure how you're thinking and look at what you're saying and then think about how I can change the language in my thoughts. So maybe I'm, instead of thinking more negatively about something, I can start thinking more positively. I can start separating my emotions to what's really going on, so I'm separating my thoughts and my feelings. So when we separate our thoughts and our feelings, sometimes they get all hooked up together when we're able to separate them. Then we can think and control our thoughts rather than our emotions driving our actions. So if you want a few exercises to do maybe later or this evening, you can do a journaling exercise and say, I feel some sort of emotion when this happens to me. So you can think about what is that stressor that I was thinking about earlier? What is it like when I hear something? Think about something specific, like when my child calls me and tells me that they need to be picked up from school, but I'm getting ready to go into a meeting. Or I have a deadline at work, but really I have three deadlines at work and I've just been trying to manage my time, but I'm not doing very well. How am I feeling and when is that happening and why? So these are some great, we're not very good generally with emotions, like identifying that specific emotion that we feel about something. We tend to know the typical ones like angry, mad, happy, sad, but there are a lot of emotions, a lot more that are out there than what you see up here. But here's some other ones. Sometimes we feel silly. Sometimes we feel curious. Sometimes we feel disappointed. But when we can identify that very specific feeling, then we know what it is that we're dealing with, right? We can recognize what that is. And when I feel maybe embarrassed, okay, why is it that I'm feeling so embarrassed about whatever it might be? Or why am I feeling so disappointed that I didn't meet this deadline, okay? So those are just different things that you can journal about. You can journal about things about how I feel a specific emotion. And when I feel this emotion, I feel it show up in my body how? When I feel frustrated, my shoulders start getting tense and my neck starts getting tense. And when I start to feel those things, I know I need to work on relaxing those areas of my body, which is going to help me shift how I feel about something. I feel confident. When do I feel confident? When are there times that I'm feeling good about what's going on, about what I'm doing? Maybe I feel happy when I do get, maybe I get a little adrenaline rush when I've waited to the last minute to do this deadline, and now I've made it and I've accomplished it. And so it was that procrastination that helped me. But when I procrastinated about three different projects and they're all due at the same time, then I'm feeling like, whoa, that was way too much. And I don't want to do that again. So how am I going to deal with that next time? And then we've talked about, oh, get a pet. Pets are actually things that help with stress. There's research, there's evidence supporting a pet helps with stress. And then seeking help from a therapist. So I want to talk a little bit about other ways to manage stress and anxiety. So some of those you've probably heard before, thought about before, done before. One of the most important things is creating your support systems. Who are your support systems? Who are those people in your life that you can turn to? Who are those trusted people? Are they family, partners, friends, extended family, neighbors? Who is it that you turn to, to talk to? So as a therapist, one of my goals, if you're my client, is to help you not come to therapy anymore. That's, that's actually a goal of some therapists. They want you to create mechanisms that are useful to you, that you're not reliant on the therapist anymore. Okay? And so part of this is who are your support systems? How do they support you? And if you don't have strong support systems, where can you find support systems? Where in your community can you find good support systems? Creating time for yourself outside of work and family. I think one of the things that I found very early in my career that was very helpful is that I found friends outside of my work colleagues. I loved my work colleagues. I love my work colleagues, but it's very important for me to have friends that are outside of that, that don't know me just as a working human being. Because guess what that does? It just encourages me to work more and think about work. And so when I have a completely different community in which I seek support from, in addition to my family, which I may or may not work with, that's helpful to me. So that's something that I found that was really helpful. What energizes you? What are some, those are, that's a journaling question that you can ask yourself. What energizes you? What are those things that give you energy, that keep wanting, that make you want to do more, whether it's personal or work-wise? And then implement positive habits, routines, and systems. So I've been to some sessions earlier today that talked about, you know, helping create behavior change and creating new habits. And those are great. It's very, very difficult to make changes, right? Anyone ever try to make a change? Sometimes I'm good at it, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I do well for a little bit, but it's not very sustainable. But oftentimes, when I'm not successful at it, it's because I don't have systems in place to keep me successful, right? I don't have mechanisms in place that help me be successful. So one of the things that has really helped me to manage my own stress is to have a morning routine. I saw that up here earlier. Somebody mentioned a morning routine. So I get up, I do a little devotion, and then I go work out. And if I don't do those things before my children get up, I'm not a very happy camper. I'm kind of irritated and cranky, and the rest of my day just doesn't go as smoothly. And so I found that I need to do those things to help me with my day. But if I don't go to bed early enough or set my alarm in the morning to get up and make that commitment to get up, my system, I don't have a system, right? I'm just relying on, oh, yeah. And I am not a morning person. And so I'm not getting up if I don't have to. And I'm definitely not getting up if my alarm's not going off. So I have to put in place things that help me be successful. So what are those things that help you be successful? Maybe it's accountability, partner. Maybe it's setting yourself up in a way in which you can create success for yourself or you can create a system that helps you be successful. Maybe it's planning out your day. Maybe it's like, I'm going to do these tasks during this time, and I'm going to do these tasks during this time. I'm only going to do three things today. And if I get those three things done, I've accomplished a whole lot, right? But I have to keep doing that every day, and I have to have a system in place to be able to do that. So my questions to you is, how are you engaging in your family and social functions or support systems? How does your workplace support you? If you're in a position, a senior leadership position, how are you supporting your employees to help them manage their stress? What systems do you have in place to help you yourself be successful? What systems do you have in place to help those around you be successful? So my next one is, I've showed this before. This is former president of NAPFA, Linda Lights, and her colleague created this for her. One of the keys is to set boundaries, right? And this is what she says. She says, she said, Christy, I have this chart that you need to have. And then she said, I don't always use this, but I should. And she says, decision to take on a new project, we should ask ourselves, do I have the time to do this? Yes or no? No, don't do it. Yes, no, you don't have time to do it, so you should not do it. All right, I'm getting the, I'm getting the time, I apologize. Last thing, think about goals, focus in on goals. That can be very helpful for managing your stress and anxiety. I think you have the slides within the app, so I think most of them are there. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. But I'll close with short and long-term goals. What's one thing that you can do when you go back to your office next week, you go back home, you probably might have thought about this presentation, or you probably forgot about this presentation by the time you get back on whenever day you're going back. But what is one thing that you are committed to do between now and Monday that will help you manage your stress better? Okay, and I will leave you with that. All right, my time is up, I think it was up a long time ago, but thanks for being a captive

Christy Archuleta

financial planning

stress management techniques

support systems

healthy eating

exercise

breathing exercises

mindfulness

journaling

setting boundaries