Getting A Grip On Stress

Meet Jan Cerasaro whose coaching helps discover a way to get more done and feel like you’re a success at the end of the day.

Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin  00:03
Hey everybody, this is Scott Levin chief peacekeeper™ and I am here with an awesome guest today that you guys are going to love. Her name is Jan Cerasaro, she happens to be my stress reduction coach. And I want you to learn a little bit more about her because I think she should be all of our stress reduction coaches. She’s a truly talented, amazing person. We’re going to have a real quick conversation now. But hopefully, there’ll be more to come. So Jan, thank you so much for being here.

Jan Cerasaro  00:33
Thanks for inviting me, Scott, I always love working with you, working with you, and working with you.

Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin  00:39
Absolutely. So now that I’ve talked Jan’s ear off for the last hour, we can start recording it all out of my system. So again, I guess one of the first things I wanted to just ask you is, what is the impact on someone’s health of carrying a lot of stress on a day today?

Jan Cerasaro  00:59
I mean, it’s huge, you know, a lot of times people think, Oh, my shoulders are tight, you know, I got tightness in my back, no big deal, you know, I can get a massage or take a warm shower or something like that. But maybe you’ve heard of the analogy from a cardiologist, of people having heart attacks and eating on cheeseburgers. And if you had one cheeseburger, and that caused a heart attack, you probably wouldn’t eat cheeseburgers? Well, stress is kind of like that, because it’s very gradual. And just like in your business, dealing with divorce issues and things. When people get into a relationship, they’re not going into a bad relationship. They’re going into something that’s nice. And each day, things change. And sometimes things change a little bit for the worst each day. And it’s the same way with stress. Because you don’t come You know, you don’t hire into a job and say, hey, I want to work 14 hour days, six days a week, not be able to see my family and things like that, you know, and so it’s just, it’s a gradual progression. Well, what happens then, is we think it’s just the shoulders, we think it’s just the back, we think maybe it’s indigestion. But what’s really happening underneath, all of that is you’re developing a lot of cortisol, your body is making lots of cortisol, that’s why a lot of times people that are under a lot of stress gain weight, it’s kind of wipes out your libido. So if you do have any time to be with your other half or significant other, you may not really want to be with the interest, if you’re looking for the fountain of youth, you definitely want to reduce your stress, because it ages people’s bodies. And so all of these things are happening so rapidly, and that doesn’t even count for the reduction in your immune system. And with COVID out there right now, we all need our immune systems to be as strong as they can be. But if you’re under a lot of stress, that’s not going to be happening.

Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin  03:10
So we all know that we’d like you to know, you look at the studies of marriage, you know, Americans in particular, work longer, work harder, are less happy than we were, you know, the decade before data, etc. So we know that stress is a part of our daily lives. We live with it. So how does helping explain to the people how you help me? How does a coach like yourself, reduce someone’s stress, improve their lifestyle?

Jan Cerasaro  03:40
Well, you know, in coaching the client like yourself, you actually are the one that has to do the work, I can’t do that for you. But let’s kind of just off the top use an analogy of football. Now the football coach isn’t running the place. But he’s may be working with the quarterback. He’s watching him. They’re getting together. He’s talking about Okay, you know, maybe kind of adjust yourself move this way, do this a little bit. And, and they do a lot of brainstorming. Watch to see how the refining and making changes will when you’re dealing with someone like myself. When you’re under a lot of stress, you only know that you’re under a lot of stress. You maybe have forgotten what you want your life to really look like. Or you’re so tired. You haven’t given a thought. And so one of the first things I do is get together with my client to find out what is it that you want your life to be if you had a magic wand and time and money weren’t a concern, what would you want it to be? how committed are you to actually having that because it is possible to make those changes and then we start coming up with a plan as to actually how to create those changes. So can I get them to walk out of the office a little bit earlier each day? Probably eventually, I mean, they have to actually walk out the door. But you know, we, we work together so that someone can reprioritize their life. Because just like, when you’re on the verge of ending a bad relationship, all of a sudden, you start becoming aware that things really aren’t the way you want them to be. And that’s exactly what I deal with, with my clients. Because, you know, they’ve, they’ve kind of gotten so stuck in a cycle, they don’t even know how to get out of it. And working with me, they’re not doing it alone, you know, so they have access to me during the week and between sessions. And, you know, we get a chance to look at what habit changes they might need to make them I can help hold them accountable for Are you actually taking steps to do that. Because sometimes that’s a big part of what you need you, you’ve got to have somebody kind of holding your feet to the fire really been holding you accountable. I have my own coach, and she does the same with me. So

Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin  06:20
no, I love that analogy to coaching too. I often use it mediation that is off-topic, but you know, when I explain to people, in my opinion, that most people can divorce or separate, you know, with keeping them as the coach or the quarterback, they’re in control of their own outcome. And they need to engage, you know, professionals and mediation and legal counsel and financial experts, they need to build that team and stress reduction, of course, and an airhead and you know, even maybe mental health professionals, etc. But they need to be in charge of that process, not just handing over their life to an attorney that they just met who’s promising them, you know, X, Y, and Z. And then that attorney takes over and they’re like, well, I don’t really know what, what I signed or what’s going on, you need to be in charge. Yeah, one question I had is, do you think that is there a difference between personal life stress and work-life stress? Or does it all kind of just go into one bucket?

Jan Cerasaro  07:25
When Well, in some respects, it goes into one bucket. Because of stress, first off, we have to have stress, it’s necessary, the stress that you and I are talking about is distress, which causes disease. But we have to add stress. I mean, making love is stressful. But I don’t think anybody’s going to give it up because it’s and, and moving, you know, moving actually stresses the body, but we just don’t think about it that way, like stubbing your toe is really a failure, but we don’t consider ourselves failure to be stubbed our toes, you know? So with stress, it’s, it’s really a lot of, it’s really self-induced. Okay.

Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin  08:11
So, from ourselves, it’s internal?

Jan Cerasaro  08:14
Well, you know, it’s self-induced, because it’s a matter of perspective. You know, how are you looking at something? Are you looking at something as, as a negative, and making it worse? Or are you looking at the same thing, and seeing that it’s positive? Like, if it’s at work, you know, you’ve got stacks of files electronically or physically? And do you look at that, as, hey, this is great, I haven’t won a business, or, you know, I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this, I don’t think I can handle it all? And, you know, expecting that you need to get it all done in one day. And, and so a lot of the stress is generated by ourselves, which is good news and bad news. The bad news is, is created by ourselves. And the good news is because it is creative ourselves, we can get rid of it. You know, and it takes time. So I mean, like in my programs, I have a three-month and a six-month program, because it takes time to be able to gradually make those changes so that they stick.

Chief PeaceKeeper™ Scott Levin  09:16
Well, I think that the work you do is amazing. I can testify from it personally. And Jan, I know we’re going to wrap up that we’re running a guy who I spoke to off-camera to you so I know you have to run but the good news is that we are going to have these conversations coming online continually. Yeah, I think that Jan is such a good speaker about any. What she offers affects us all. You know lawyers stay-at-home moms people with a lot of money, people with a little money. So Jan is your stress reduction coach. She mans the fire hose. I’ll let you finish it in Jan.

Jan Cerasaro  09:55
I man the fire hose when you’re close to burnout.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai