Chronic Stress Goes Hand in Hand with Running a Business. Lorie Eber, Certified Wellness Coach, helps you get to the root of your stress and conquer it.

1. How to Run a Business and
Survive with Your Sanity Intact

2. My Story

3. Stress Test

4. It Could Be Worse

5. How to Get Your Stress Under Control

6. Take-A-Ways
• Identify your major stressors
• Understand how chronic stress harms your body and brain
• Analyze your current coping mechanisms
• Strategize about ways to reduce stress
• Commit to one SMART stress-reduction goal

7. Partner Up: Circle Top 2 Stressors

8. Let’s Discuss

9. Calling all Workaholics & Perfectionists

10. Are You a Workaholic?
• Take the Bergen Work Addiction Test
• Uses core symptoms of drug addiction

11. How Many Hours Do You Work?
• Average number of hours worked by entrepreneur: 70 per week
• Most workers only use 51% of their paid vacation time
• 61% of Americans work on vacation

12. Are You a Perfectionist?

13. Tell-Tale Signs of Perfectionism

14. Trait #1
You are highly conscious and hyper-critical of mistakes.

15. Trait #2
You have to be the best at everything, even if it’s something
you’re not interested in.

16. Trait #3
You spend a lot of time to make everything absolutely perfect.

17. Trait #4
You are your harshest critic.

18. Trait #5
You mull over a less than optimal outcome and wonder what you
did wrong.

19. Trait #6
You react defensively to constructive criticism.

20. Trait #7
You focus exclusively on achieving the goal at all costs.

21. Stress Bell Curve: Optimal v. Your Reality

22. Good Stress and Bad Stress

23. Eustress
• “eu” = well or good
• Term coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye
• You feel challenged, but not overwhelmed

24. Optimal Stress

25. Stress Hormones Are For Survival

26. Your Body on Stress: Fight-or-Flight

27. Good in the Short Run
• Adrenaline (immediate)
• Cortisol (prolonged)

28. What % of ER Visits Triggered by Stress?
• 90% CDC Estimate

29. What Chronic Stress Does to Your Body
• Anxiety
•Depression
•Digestive problems
•Heart disease
•Sleep problems
•Weight gain
•Cancer

30. The Scary Science

31. The Common Cold
• 2012 study of 276 healthy adults
• Those with chronic stress were more likely to get sick
• Immune system cells were unable to properly respond

32. Weight Gain
• 2014: Women who had experienced a stressful event in the last
24 hours burned 104 fewer calories than after eating fast-food
than those who were stress-free
• Adds up to 11 lbs. per year
• Stressed women had higher insulin levels,
contributing to fat storage

33. Slower Healing
• 2012 study of older women caring for relatives with dementia
• Took 24% longer to heal from biopsy wound
• Slow healing most apparent in first two weeks, when infections
happen

34. Heart Disease
• 2014 study of stressed-out medical students
• They had an excessive number of white blood cells
• Previous study in mice found that cortisol changes white blood
cells so they stick to artery walls

35. A Shorter Life
• Chronic stress shortens length of telomeres: the agent of death

36. Telomere Shortening Studies
• Finnish Health Study: work-related exhaustion
• Mothers caring for disabled children
• Caregivers for relatives with dementia
• Boys in a stressful home environment

37. Summary of Effects of Chronic Stress
• Body is permanently primed for fight or flight
• Changes gene activity of immune cells, leading to chronic
inflammation

38. What it Does to Your Brain
• Impairs communication among neurons
• Slows production of new neurons
• Creates elevated levels of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s

39. Secondhand Stress
• It’s contagious and easily transmitted
• Babies catch it from their mothers
• Students catch it from nervous speakers

40. Brainstorm Stress-Reduction Techniques

41. Partner Up: Draft SMART Goal
• Aim: Be a little imperfect

42. Examples: Set SMART Goals
• Too vague: I’ll spend more time with my family.
• SMART: I’ll eat dinner with my family on Mon., Wed., and Friday.
• Too vague: I’ll relax more.
• SMART: I’ll download the Calm App and listen to Session #1 on
Saturday at noon.

43. Three Layers of Accountability
• Each partner sets one stress-reduction goal for this week
• Create means of self-accountability
• Email each other by the end of the week re goal achievement
• Send me an email right now with contact info for each partner
• If you report that you achieved your goal:
• PRIZE: Complimentary 1-hour Wellness Coaching session
EberLorie@gmail.com

44. Contact Information
EberLorie@gmail.com
714-357-9946
www.LorieEberWellnessCoaching.com
Get Real. Get Healthy.®