Can You Have Positive Stress?

Alex Charfen: When things are challenging for us as entrepreneurs, we feel stress, we feel pressure. We actually recognize the pressure and noise. When our business isn't going well, that's when we feel it.

Here's the reality though; when things are going well, when we're in momentum, when things are moving forward fast, that also causes pressure and noise. We have to be careful, or things can come tumbling down.

The systems, the programs, the processes we put together as a company and the coaching programs we have help entrepreneurs move into a higher level of success fast, sometimes so fast that it catches people off guard. In fact, when people work with us and are in our coaching programs, those that apply the materials typically see a doubling of their business or more within the first 12 months.

In fact, it's not uncommon for somebody to grow their business much faster than that. In fact, Mariah Coz and Megan Minns started with us, they were only two people. They put our systems, our structure in place; their team ballooned to seven people. What's more impressive, they went from about a million dollars a year to over three million dollars a year in just a few months.

That type of explosive growth is positive, it's exciting, it makes us feel like we're in momentum. However, as entrepreneurs we have to know that just because something is positive and we're moving in the right direction, doesn't mean that it's not causing us pressure and noise.

The movement in a good direction, the movement in a positive direction can be just as stressful to our systems as having challenging times, as having bad times. The fact is, we don't really recognize it that way. When things are going well, when we're in momentum, when we're doing more, when things are happening, we often feel like we're invincible, like we're untouchable, like we can just keep going.

What happens to so many entrepreneurs, and I can tell you this first hand because I've watched it hundreds of times in my career, is that we get into a high level of momentum, things are going incredibly well, and then we forget that we still have to offload while we're uncomfortable, take care of ourselves, put the time in to self care, make sure that we're offloading stressors. That we're getting the help we need, or things can come tumbling down.

It was a few years ago that I spoke for Robin Sharma at his Titans Summit. It was one of the highlights of my career. Robin said the path to success for all of you is through self care. It doesn't matter how well things are going, how healthy you feel, and how good things are going right now; it still is through self care.

What Robin was expressing is that we need to take care of ourselves no matter how well things are going and no matter how much momentum we feel, because if we don't, things can come tumbling down for us. In fact, in psychology, and I've done a ton of research on this. I've done obsessive research about how do we remove stressors, how do we move forward, how do we create momentum as human beings?

In psychology there is two researchers, Holmes and Rahe, it's actually called the Holmes Rahe SSRS Scale. I believe it's the Social Stressors Readjustment Scale. What Holmes and Rahe discovered was that there are lists of things that actually cause stress in our lives, but those things can be positive or negative.

Let me give you an example of some of the top stressors in someone's life; the death of a loved one, divorce, or loss of a job. Those are obvious that those are going to cause stress, those are going to cause pressure and noise, those are going to slow us down. They're going to make us challenged, and upset, and frustrated.

However, listen to the next three that are on the list; getting married, moving to a new home, or a change in your financial condition. Just the same way a death of a loved one, or divorce, or loss of a job can move you into a stressful position, change in your financial conditions, getting married, or moving to a new home. Those can all three be positive.

You can start making more money, get married to somebody that you love and move into a bigger house, and they cause a massive amount of stress. What we don't realize as entrepreneurs when things are going well is that we are still exposed to pressure and noise. When we do something like get married, or we start making a lot more money, or we move into a bigger property, that all of those things will cause stress. It's just we don't predict it.

In fact, when we are moving in a positive direction, we often assume that everything is going to continue to be positive. In fact, we don't in those times typically offload where we're uncomfortable, we don't push to make sure that we're making sure that we're taking care of ourselves. Often when things are going really well, that's when we let self care slide, that's when we let our diets slide, our hydration slide.

We don't actually step it up and take care of ourselves even more. Here's why I feel like this is so important. I've worked with entrepreneurs to help them create success for over 20 years. I've helped people create multimillion dollar businesses, sometimes nine figure, sometimes ten figure, billion and multibillion dollar outcomes.

What happens so often is that when an entrepreneur starts moving in the right direction and in the momentum, they start neglecting themselves. We get so excited about the positive things that are happening, we don't realize that those positive things actually still cause pressure and noise. Those adjustments still have to be made.

Getting married was one of the best things that I've ever done in my life, but those first few years ... Not one of the, probably the best decision I ever made in my entire life was getting married to Cadey, and the most important decision I made in my entire life was getting married to Cadey.

The adjustment of going from being single and not being married, to being married to someone and having a long term commitment was a massive adjustment. I remember the house that Cadey and I have now, we absolutely loved this property. We have a huge house, there's so many bedrooms. I don't even know how many there really are, I just know there's a lot.

Cadey has her own office, I have my own office. The girls both have big master suite type rooms with their own bathrooms, my office has its own bathroom. We have two gyms downstairs, a theater room. We have a massive conference area, and party area, and a guest suite, and a pool in the back yard.

This property is insane, I never in my entire life thought I would have a property like this to live in. I always dreamed about it, but I never really thought that it would happen. I grew up with really humble means, so to finally have a house that's almost 10,000 square feet and has home automation and everything else, is crazy.

When we moved in here, I can remember how stressful it was. We spent a massive amount of money, we wrote the biggest check either Cadey or I had ever written in our lives. We didn't have a mortgage on this property, so we wrote a check for over seven figures in a day. That was incredibly stressful.

At the time our business was exploding, we were doing really well financially, but all of that growth was causing even more stress. I remember after, briefly after moving in here, I got really sick. It took me a couple weeks to get better, and it was like all the stress of all the positive changes were still changes. Even though they were all positive, they were still changes and it took me out for a couple of weeks.

The reason that I taught entrepreneurs so much about self care, and hydration, and sleep, and nutrition, and movement, and breathing, and meditation is that when things start going well, we will get caught off guard and get taken out of the game because we're not taking care of ourselves because we don't think about it when things are going well. When you look at the reality, the science behind what causes us stress, positive changes can cause us just as much stress as negative changes.

It was interesting, this morning I put on Instagram that we had a couple of really intense days in our business. I felt reactive, I actually felt like I was in a little bit of a fight or flight. I reached out to Dave Heitman, whose the most intense practitioner I've ever worked with. He's the doctor that is advising me on what I need to do. He's a chiropractor and incredibly amazing.

I said, "Dave, I feel like I'm reactive. I feel like I'm a little bit overreactive maybe. What do I need to do to take care of myself?" He told me to go do wind sprints until I knocked myself out of that reactivity, which I thought was awesome. What I didn't want him to say was, "Hey, you need to go sit in a room and breathe." I felt like I needed to get some energy out, so he made that suggestion.

I put him on Instagram and we had a couple people reach out to me and say, "Hey, is everything okay?" When I said we had a couple of intense days, I actually meant positively intense. There was so much going on, some opportunities have opened up.

We did have some changes that caught me off guard, but I just had one of the best webinars I've ever had. We've been working with a team who's helping us set it up and do a webinar where we're going to be getting people into our Billionaire Code Accelerator. I've been working with Mariah Coz and Megan, who not only are my clients, I'm their clients are well. It's been an incredibly positive time in so many different ways, but it's not without its challenges.

I've learned how to recognize that even when things are going well, when I'm moving in the right direction, that there's still stress there. If things are going well for you right now, now's the time to double down on self care. Now's the time to make sure you're taking care of yourself. Now's the time to make sure that you are hydrating, and breathing, and planning, and moving the right way, and doing your primal walks in the morning, and eating the right foods because you'll continue to do well.

If you're growing a business and growing a team, you have to understand that just because there's growth there doesn't mean that there's the absence of stress. That growth is actually an indicator of the presence of stress. Whether you feel it or not, because it's positive you might not feel it, you still have to guard against it.

You as a human organism are taking on the stress of growth. You're taking on the stress of additional people. You're taking on the stress of change and of adjustment. Whether things are going well or not, you have to take care of yourself as an entrepreneur. It will be a source of getting you in the right direction if things aren't going well, and keeping you going in the right direction if they are.

If you're not taking care of yourself, you have to know that if you're moving in the wrong direction, it's only going to move you there faster. Here's the big one, if things are going in the right direction and you're not taking care of yourself, you are setting up landmines in your life that eventually are going to go off. I don't want you to do that.

The path to success is through self care. So many successful entrepreneurs talk about this, but so few pay attention. If you can connect mind and body at a higher level through hydration, nutrition, movement, and breathing the right way, you will create more momentum regardless of what's going on in your life.

Whether things are going well or things are challenging, you have to know that either way you are adjusting and reacting to what's happening. Take care of yourself at the very highest level.

I have a first step for you, and an easy one. You can go to getthirstynow.com, that's getthirstynow.com and take our 10 Day Natural Thirst Challenge. This is a protocol that I share with 100% of my clients. In fact, if you joined one of our coaching programs today and paid us tens of thousands of dollars a year, we would start with coaching you on hydration.

Even though we show people how to hire the right people, and build the right systems in their companies, and have the communications cadence like I've told you on this podcast; we start with the entrepreneur getting hydrated. When you come to my events, in the back of the room at our Billionaire Code Summits, we have tables full of liter bottles of water. Not those little eight ounce things, those are a good start. We have huge bottles of water, just stacks of them.

In fact, we have an agreement with the hotel that we're allowed to bring in our own water because if we bought it from them it would cost us hundreds of dollars a day just to give people water. We bring in cases of water so that everybody stays hydrated. When your mind-body connected, you're more present, you're more aware, you're more likely to stay in momentum, you're more likely to learn more.

If you're not doing that right now, this is a massive first step. In fact, water is a gateway drug to success. Water is a gateway drug to health, water is a gateway drug to weight adjustment to a natural weight. Water is a gateway drug to moving you into momentum.

If you haven't done our 10 Day Natural Thirst Challenge yet, I want you to try it out. Go to getthirstynow.com. There's a few videos there to watch, don't miss the video on the home page. We just had the entire funnel redone by my friend Chris Benetti in Australia, who is the southern hemisphere's best funnel builder, or greatest funnel builder. Really, I think he's one of the best funnel builders in the world, let's be honest.

You can check out the new funnel, the new design, it's absolutely gorgeous. Also, take our 10 day challenge. If you take the 10 day challenge, by the end of 10 days you will be drinking more water than you ever thought possible, which we all need.

That's where it starts. What you'll also realize by the end of 10 days, you are more mind-body connection. You will feel connected, you will feel better. If you have chronic pain or chronic challenges, you will see those improve. It's amazing what water will do for you, and I want to start you on the path to taking care of yourself.

Whether you're in momentum or not, this is one of the fastest ways to create more to get you going in the right direction and to keep you going there. Go to getthirstynow.com. Yes, I know that thirsty is a way that the younger people are talking about getting busy. Yes, we know. We did a play on words there, we get it, it was on purpose.

Go to getthirstynow.com, start drinking more water than you ever thought possible. You never know, water may change your life.