Leaning Into The New Type A (for Acceptance)
Hi Byte Wellness Fam!
In last week’s #SelfLove Letter, we talked about US Track-and-Field star Sha’Carri Richardson’s impressive 100-meter dash to win the 2023 World Championship title in Budapest, Hungary.
Turns out she’s not just a model of fitness, she’s also an incredible example of two stress-management themes that we discussed in this week’s #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop:
Faith and
Acceptance (of the AAA stress-blocking mindset)
Discussion Question:
Of the stressors (things that cause you stress) that you named last week, which of those can you control?
What happens when you can’t control them?
We talked about stress in this fourth week of our Wellness RESET challenge (where we uncover which of our wellness superpowers we need to activate in order to support our bodies’ natural healing systems).
Remember, those natural healing systems are what we call wellness resilience.
Wellness resilience is like a wellness battery that helps us prevent and manage conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, heart attack, stroke, many cancers, and even more.
Like most batteries, our wellness resilience constantly needs to be recharged.
Stress is one of the big 4 wellness superpowers that supercharge our wellness battery and helps us prevent disease.
Make sure you check out the Discussion Question above and watch the recording of the workshop below. Both help us understand how shifting our current mindset can block our stress from rising to unbearable levels which puts us at risk for chronic diseases.
If you want weekly invites to the Wednesday night workshops, join the Daily Wellness Text Thread by sending TEXT to 1(866)717-1919.
How Sha’Carri’s Faith Intersects with the AAA Mindset
There’s power in realizing where we can make a difference in our lives. Humans thrive when we feel empowered to bring about the futures we dream of- when we have an internal locus of control.
In reality, we don't control much around us. Most of our power lies in controlling how we behave and how we approach life (our mindset).
It’s ridiculously hard to find that balance between using our power and accepting vulnerability. But, finding that balance is the key to blocking chronic stress.
When we can leverage our power to do the best we can while admitting that we don't have complete control over the results, we
Our community pointed out in the #PhyteWellWednesday workshop that faith helps many of us find this balance.
Let’s look at how Sha’Carri Richardson used faith to beat the stress and pressure of the last few years.
When you consider what challenges she overcame over the last few years, her achievements at these 2023 World Championships are even more impressive.
Remember when, just over 2 years ago, Sha’Carri learned that she’d lost her biological mother right before she successfully raced to qualify for the 2021 Olympics?
Then she had her spot on the Olympic team revoked when officials discovered marijuana in her system.
In those days and weeks after news of Sha’Carri’s positive drug test emerged, the world seemed all too eager to write her off. They raced to say what they’d been thinking all along
It’s hard to imagine the layers of grief (personal and professional) that Sha’Carri suddenly had to navigate in a very public forum.
Now, Sha’Carri is back and better! She’s running faster than ever and responding to pressure with grace.
And, she’s vocal about how her faith got through what must have been one of the most stressful periods of her life.
After qualifying for the 100m dash semifinals at the World Championships Budapest, a reporter asked what standard she held herself to given the expectations the world has for her.
She answered: "The world? I'm not worried about the world anymore. I've seen the world be my friend, I've seen the world turn on me. At the end of the day, I've always been with me. God has always been with me… now it's my time to actually do it for myself.”
The AAA Mindset
With wisdom well beyond her 23 years, Sha’Carri demonstrates how powerful the 2nd point in our AAA mindset is for blocking stress.
Remember our stress-blocking 3As? These are 3 questions to cycle through when we feel stress to figure out how much out stress is due to our own PERCEPTION of the world.
Address: Am I feeling stressed about things I can control? What can I do to change those things and make them less stressful?
Accept: Am I stressing myself out by trying to change things I can't control?
Affirm: Am I stressing myself out by fighting my feelings?
ACCEPTANCE is key.
Not worried ABOUT THE WORLD
If we can minimize our resistance to what the world gives us, we block stress and maximize our performance.
Sha’Carri clearly knows that.
Her interview lets us know two things:
-She knows she doesn’t have control over what people think of her (she’s already absorbed so much of the world’s alternating love and hate that she knows how arbitrary it is)
-Because she can’t control the world’s opinion of her, she’s not invested in pleasing the world by meeting its expectations
GOD’S GOT ME
The second feature of Sha’Carri’s mindset of least resistance is her faith.
Sha'Carri seems to really believe that she can reach her goals in career and life regardless of how the world regards her because, "I've always been with me, and God has always been with me".
She tells us that she’s able to accept the fickle nature of the world because she has two types of belief:
-belief in her own power and
-her faith that God will support the best outcome for her
That’s what balances her power and her vulnerabilty: faith.
Sha'Carri acknowledges that her faith has helped her accept the things she can't control (including other people's thoughts)
And that makes sense, right?
We don’t need to control every aspect of our lives when we truly believe that things will turn out all right in the end...even without our influence and regardless of how bad they seem now.
Faith is that little voice that whispers, “just keep pushing- it’ll be all right”.
Most of us use some version of faith in everyday life.
Our faith might come from belief in God or some other higher power, or from a more individual spirituality or simply from an optimistic outlook on life.
Control vs. Chronic Inflammation
It’s easy to feel like the world needs to work a certain way in order for us to thrive. But, our attachment to specific outcomes is a mindset that causes stress.
The mindset that decides certain outcomes are “good” and others are “bad” (even unacceptable) builds resistance and worry, shame and guilt that our minds and bodies read as “stress”.
I’m not going to tell you it’s wrong to aim for health results that are likely to make our lives easier (even longer) and work to avoid the results that will add extra challenges to life.
After all, we gather in this community over text and virtual video so we can learn how to reclaim power over our health.
Working to better ourselves and our community isn’t a problem.
However…
Worrying over future results and refusing to accept results that don’t fit our plan is a problem.
The world doesn’t always give us what we want, even when we’ve worked hard and followed all the rules.
If we’re honest, we aren’t in control of the world around us most of the time.
Trying to take control over things that we can’t control creates stress.
Constant stress creates chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation puts us at risk for so many chronic diseases we want to avoid.
So, it’s in our best interest to learn how to make the most of what the world does give us with as little internal pushback as possible.
That’s where the power of acceptance comes in.
Acceptance In Action: Examples
What does a stress-busting accepting mindset look like?
Let’s run through some examples. These mindsets are the opposite of acceptance.
-We might think our kids HAVE to ace that exam in order to have any shot at getting into that special school.
-We HAVE to get the new position at work in order to boost our careers in just the right way.
There’s nothing wrong with having those goals. But, the mindset that positions those results (things we don’t have full control over) as MUST HAVES is a stress-provoking one.
Our brains know there are too many variables at work to know for sure (despite all the preparation in the world) that Junior will ace their test.
If we think any outcome other than a perfect score is unacceptable, we’ll worry about what Junior’s score will be.
But, if we can accept the possibility that by some stroke of fate, Junior forgets answers to one or two questions, there’s no cause for worry.
After the fact, stress can show up as shame or guilt. If Junior missed some questions on their test (or, worse, failed it completely), are we prepared to accept that result and troubleshoot how to help them?
Or are we so resistant to the reality of Junior’s less-than-perfect score that all we can to do is:
- ignore the score (focus on the next task)
-deflect blame onto the kid (they didn’t work hard enough)
-or shovel guilt onto ourselves (I haven’t spent enough time helping Junior study)
We see some of the same patterns in this healing community. I’m talking about myself here. But, can you relate? It’s so tempting to talk about our health goals in strict terms.
We HAVE to reach a certain fitness level by the summer.
We HAVE to lose 50 pounds to reverse our type 2 diabetes before the next doctor’s visit.
We HAVE to get off our blood pressure medication by next year.
In truth, an inactive lifestyle, longstanding uncontrolled high blood pressure, and uncontrolled type 2 diabetes can lead to awful things over time: a stroke or heart attack, kidney failure, other end-stage diseases, and even early death.
Those conditions could be disabling. They could make our lives and our family’s lives very difficult.
It makes all the sense in the world to work hard to get our blood sugar and blood pressure under control.
For most people, there’s more flexibility than we realize in how and when we finally reach these goals
There are lots of ways to do that (including lifestyle changes AND medication if we need it).
If we miss our blood sugar goal (A1c) or our blood pressure is high at the next check, can we accept that result and adapt our treatment accordingly? Or, is it so hard to accept that our body didn’t do exactly what we wanted it to that we give up trying?
Giving Up Control Isn’t Giving Up on Goals
It’s worth noting that acceptance of “bad” results doesn’t mean giving up on our goals (especially not our health goals). Accepting “bad” results is a cheatcode for reaching goals with less suffering. Accepting “bad” results changes the trajectory of our lives for the better.
We know we’ve accepted a result when we can admit the reality to ourselves (not live in denial) and learn from it in order to work toward our goals with new insight.
In fact, sometimes accepting “bad” results the goal we were working toward isn’t a good fit for us after all.
If we accept the possibility of getting results we consider non-ideal even before we have any results, we avoid all the anxiety that builds up over the possibility of a bad outcome. When we truly believe we can work through any outcome, we overcome our fear of ending up in a “bad” outcome. That’s faith. More on that later.
Personality Type A (for Acceptance)
Some of us adopt a type A approach to life in order to reduce stress by feeling more in control of our environment. Ironically, this approach comes undone at the first hint of unpredictability.
And, even when things work out the way we want them to, all that worrying and working to control outcomes only seems to add to our stress load.
In our last #PhyteWellWednesday Workshop, we concluded that, where stress-management is concerned, what happens in our lives isn’t the most important thing to control.
Rather, our response to what happens in our lives is what determines whether we build stress around the things that happen.
As Sha’Carri showed us, faith is a wellness resource that helps us create non-stressful responses to life.
Faith, no matter the source, helps us navigate life’s twits and turns, which means blocking stress, fighting chronic inflammation, and preventing disease.
Do you have a different mindset approach that helps you block stress? Let me know.
Happy Healthy Living,
Dr. Wuse