Unmasking Greatness
Join Fitness/LifeStyle Expert & Mentor Chris Kakouras talk about maximizing your health, business, mindset, and overall life! Let's get better together as I bring on amazing guest to interview and learn from!
Unmasking Greatness
Stressed AF? Three Tactics That Cost Nothing But Change Everything
Ever felt like you were drowning in stress, unable to see a way forward? You're not alone.
In this deeply personal episode, I pull back the curtain on one of the most challenging seasons of my life. From losing my father to cancer and handling the aftermath, to dealing with significant financial disappointments and unexpected family challenges – I've recently found myself at a breaking point where giving up seemed like the only option.
What I've learned through this struggle is something I want to share with you: never make permanent decisions based on temporary feelings. No matter how insurmountable your problems may seem, there are practical, accessible ways to manage your stress and find your center again.
I break down the physiological impact of chronic stress on your body – how it disrupts cortisol regulation, triggers inflammation, and keeps your nervous system perpetually in fight-or-flight mode. For those dealing with autoimmune conditions, this stress response can cascade into painful flare-ups that range from uncomfortable to potentially life-threatening.
The good news? I share three powerful, cost-free tactics that have helped me regain my footing: simple breathing exercises, journaling techniques, and mindful movement practices. These aren't just feel-good activities – they're science-backed approaches to regulate your nervous system and reduce cortisol levels. I explain exactly how to implement each one, whether you have three minutes or can only spare a single breath between sips of water throughout your day.
Beyond techniques, this episode is a reminder that you're not facing these challenges alone. Finding the right supportive community can make all the difference between sinking and swimming through life's hardest moments. As I often tell my clients, sustainable health isn't just about nutrition and exercise – we have to "diet from the inside out" to achieve lasting success and wellbeing.
Ready to build your mental resilience brick by brick? Listen now, and let's get through this together.
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Welcome to Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Kikoris, a lifestyle fitness coach and mentor. This podcast is about unmasking your greatest potential, finding your purpose and crafting a life worth living. Health and fitness has been the gateway drug to all of my success. My continuous drive to keep learning and surround myself with other high achievers forces me to level up, which has developed my mind to something I never thought was possible. This podcast is here to share what I've learned and continue to learn with all of you. This is your sign to take back control of your health, mindset and personal environment. Strap in as we are recharged and always find value in the show. Please subscribe and share, as we can all get better together. Let's go. What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Unmasking Greatness. I'm your host, chris Koukouris, and I am here to tell you. I hope you have a good day and if you are not having a good day or you're not having a good week, this episode is 100% for you. I'm talking to you, the one that is stressed, the one that has anxiety, the one that wants to give up and just throw in the towel because life is too hard. This episode is for you, so go ahead and start turning it up, get focused and hear what I got to say, because you know what You're not alone. You're not alone.
Speaker 1:I'm here to tell you, and get a little bit vulnerable with you, that the last couple months of my life I feel like have been one of the toughest seasons that I have gone through. I got to, even I even got to a point where I just wanted to give up. I didn't even know what I was doing anymore. I was like why am I doing the things that I'm doing? And it just becomes overwhelming at some points and you have to remind yourself it's a bad day. Things are going to stack up, but I always tell myself it's a bad day, and I emphasize day, because I don't have a bad life. I'm blessed and I know there's millions of people that would trade their lives with me because theirs are way worse and I recognize that. But I am going to say that doesn't change the fact that I am stressed out, my dang mind.
Speaker 1:I am going through it and if you guys have heard previous episodes to give you guys some context if you haven't, you know, for the past year I was taking my father to do his chemo treatments because he had, you know, stage four lung cancer with a skew of other medical conditions, and then his passing. That happened, you know, almost two months ago now. So that was a big shift in somebody's life. You know, when you have a family member like your father, your mother, that passes, it is a massive shift in energy and you got to know how to navigate it. And it's a massive shift in energy and, uh, you gotta know how to navigate it and sometimes it's just going through it. Nobody can tell you how to, you know, handle your feelings and your emotions and you just gotta, you gotta go through it yourself and everybody handles it differently. So you know that was a massive shift. And then trying to help and support my, my mother, uh, with you know getting things together, you know, when people pass, they leave things behind or they haven't finished certain things and you have to kind of rile things up and get things organized again. So I always knew, and my father really told me I was going to have to do that for her. So he was right, he warned me. But you know, we're getting things together and things are starting to smooth out, but it's a hard hit and we're still dealing with some of that stuff.
Speaker 1:On top of that I made a pretty heavy financial commitment to a coaching group that just didn't pan out, didn't work out that great. Am I mad about it? No, there's always a risk. There's always a risk when you get into things like this and you just kind of got to bite the bullet. But unfortunately it doesn't make things any better when you invest a ton of money into something and it's just kind of, you know, tossed away. You win some, you lose some and I took some nuggets out but just definitely wasn't the return that I was looking for and what I was wanting. So you know, having a financial burden, that's that's never fun. You know everybody stresses about money, you know, especially these days. So top that on there.
Speaker 1:And then you know I have some other you know personal things going on in my life that I'm not. You know I'm not here to be able to speak on those sorts of things. It's not my place but it definitely affects, you know, our family and things of that nature. So things that I never thought I would ever deal with, you know. So it's easy to tell yourself nobody understands me, nobody knows what I'm going through, nobody has it as hard as me. I can tell you there is somebody, and there's somebody that is going harder than you, and I want to remind you that you never want to make permanent decisions on temporary feelings. Never, never, never. I mean this is where the common cases of attempted suicide or even full-blown suicide come from. You've lost faith, you've lost hope, you've lost the sight of knowing that there's a light at the end of the tunnel and it seems in the time, in that specific time, that it's easier to just be done, and I hope you guys never get to that point. I hope you guys never get there.
Speaker 1:I've been very close myself, but again, it's you got to get in your head. And you know the reason I'm telling you these things is because I'm human. I'm just like you guys. I have feelings. I'm not perfect. I've, you know, same thing with when it comes to fitness. Like I didn't come out of my mom with abs. You know I was not the most healthy kid. I was drinking, you know, a 12 pack of Coca-Cola's when I was like nine years old. You know I did it all and, no regrets, loved it at the time. Now I can't stand to drink a Coca-Cola right now. But you know, the deal is, you got to have time to work on yourself. I've been not only have I been going through a lot of things, I've been able to, you know, connect with a lot of our current clients now and you know I build pretty good relationships with them and we end up talking about some personal things.
Speaker 1:And one of them and I'm going to keep this broad because obviously I want to keep things confidential, but a big thing that's been popping up is individuals having autoimmune diseases. Now, if you're not familiar with autoimmune diseases, it is basically the body's attacking itself due to something and unfortunately, with this and most doctors, there's no clear-cut answer of what it is. They kind of toss medications at you or toss symptoms and try different solutions to try to help what's going on. But most of these individuals that I talk to, there's no cure and it's just a test run. It's just a test run of trying to mitigate symptoms, but one of the things that causes these flare-ups and some of them are very painful some of them can give you hives all over your body. Some of the hives can get so bad where it actually closes your throat, where you can't breathe anymore.
Speaker 1:There are situations that just your body is doing these things, but what really excels it and pours gasoline on this issue and these flare-ups, is stress. It is stress. And so I say this because I want to talk about stress. I want to talk about how you guys can do some simple things day to day to help mitigate your stress. Now, I'm not saying this is going to fix all your problems. Not going to say that, because it's not. It's not going to fix all your problems, but it's going to help. And guess what? Every little bit helps. One brick what does one brick do? Not much, but if you got a lot of bricks, you can build a house. So every brick makes a difference, brick by brick. Think of it that way. Start building the foundation for you to have some mental peace. And so, when it comes to stress, understand what it's doing to your body.
Speaker 1:And I won't get too deep into this, but I will say one of the number one hormones related to stress is cortisol. Okay, cortisol is not bad, but it can be bad if there's not a regulation of it. Right, your cortisol should be a little bit higher as you wake up and taper towards the end of the day. This is how you start regulating your sleep and also your body's functions. So you know, if your cortisol is out of whack it's very hard to, you know, drop body fat. It's very hard to build muscle. There's a whole skew of things on top of the inflammation that goes in your body. You're constantly in fight or flight, so your nervous system is completely irregular and unbalanced. So being able to start to mitigate your stress can help regulate some of these things or at least kind of put it more in a baseline level.
Speaker 1:But understand that stress is affecting your body significantly. I mean you can put yourself into a sickness if you constantly are just worrying about every single thing. That's just totally out of your control. And so I say that to say there are things that you can do. Some of these things may sound woo-woo to you, but I can tell you when you get to a point where you have completely feel like you've lost reins of all control, guess what? All the woo-woos you will take and you will try. Not all of them work, but you're willing to give it a shot. And that's what I want to talk about with you, because these are things that I do and have done that now I tell some of our clients to do to just help just bring them peace right, and because I always ask them. You know everybody that's going through stress and I'm asking you too, that you listeners that are listening do you do any personal development work, whether that's you know, hopefully? I mean you're listening to this podcast, so that counts as one. Do you read, do you meditate? Do you take time to work on your mindset? Because this is the only way you're going to get those bricks to build that house and that foundation to really keep you protected.
Speaker 1:Think of this right. I mean I'm not the biggest guy, but I'm bigger than your average person. If I am kind of leaning to the side, you know weights on one side, a little five-year-old could push me and I would probably fall over because I'm not centered right. I'm not centered in my place, so I'm very easily be able to topple over. Now, if I'm centered and I got a strong base, no kid and no man's going to push me over. Unless you're like 400 pounds, you push me over. But in general, if you're centered, you're in a very strong place.
Speaker 1:The only way to do that is to work on yourself. You have to find your center, you have to find peace, and so chaos inside of you cannot be affected by the outside right. So your external world cannot always affect everything that's going inside. Things could be going crazy around you, but if you have good peace and you're centered, that shouldn't affect how you're moving and what direction that you're going. Understand what I'm saying. So the only way to do this is to work on yourself.
Speaker 1:So I want to kind of share a little bit of the things that I've been doing. There's three tactics that I like to do that has helped me, and try it. That's all I ask. Try one. You don't have to do all of them. Try one, start with one and then go from there Again. If one works great, add another one. If one doesn't work, try a different one. Everybody's body's different. Everybody thinks differently and moves differently. You got to find what works for you. Okay, so these are things you can do right now and cost you nothing. All right.
Speaker 1:So the first thing is actually doing some breathing techniques. If you go online, there are tons, tons of different ones. Don't find complicated ones. If you're starting, you want something very simple and easy and make it easy for yourself. You don't want to be doing things in the middle of the day when things are kind of chaotic as it is. So what I would suggest is doing three minutes. Okay, three minutes Now. You can either do this, I suggest, in the morning or the evening, or even get to when you're doing it both Okay. But you know, one of the reasons that breathing is so good is that it helps regulate your nervous system. It also helps reduce cortisol.
Speaker 1:Think about the times that you were like super stressed out in the moment, right, or someone gets you so frustrated and you do this. You're like, oh, okay, like a really like deep, deep breath, like belly breath, and you're just. It kind of soothes you, kind of calms you just a little bit, just a little bit. Now let's, let's amplify that by doing that three times. Right. So you want to find a good spot.
Speaker 1:You know, personally, when I started doing this, I was doing it in bed. I would lay down. This was my day, my at the end of my day, where I would try to like chill out, calm down. So my spot was actually right when I would lay down in bed. I would close my eyes and for three minutes, what I would do is I would do a deep inhale through the nose, four seconds in and then I would hold it for four seconds and then I would exhale slowly through my mouth six to eight seconds, and when you're inhaling you almost want to focus on trying to draw that air into your belly. So not the diaphragm, more belly breathing, and I would repeat that for five or six times and you'd be amazed how, because of you focusing on your breathing, it really kind of pulls you in the moment and just soothes you. So I encourage you guys to give that a shot. Okay, the next one that I do and I still do this to the day is journaling.
Speaker 1:Now, journaling could be a lot of different things. You could be doing a full blown journal, or you could be doing things that you're grateful for. I'll tell you what I've been doing. So you know, one of the things with journaling is really just getting those thoughts out of your head. A lot of us don't talk about what's going on mentally with us. We don't have somebody to talk to, we don't have a therapist, or you know we don't. You don't want to burden somebody with your problems and we need to find some mental relief and release, and a great way is to just put it down on paper and also sometimes, when you read it, it puts things into perspective, right. So I like to do mine in the morning personally, so I write down one to three things that I'm grateful for and I really give it some thought, and then I also write one thing that I can let go, what's one thing that doesn't serve me. And there's three C's that you can follow.
Speaker 1:Right, you want to make sure, when you think about this kind of thing, that you control what you can control, you cope with what you can't and you concentrate on what matters. So things that you can control. That's what you want to put a lot of emphasis on. Matters, so things that you can control, that's what you want to put a lot of emphasis on. If there's something that you can do away with, get away with, release it, do that. If there's things in your life that you can't control things like death, things like your job, things like the news right now, it is what it is. There's nothing that you can do about it. So you need to concentrate on what matters, and what matters is you and focusing on you. So try doing something like that.
Speaker 1:I used to do this, actually, if you're, if you're somebody that's very busy and you got a lot of things going on in your head. I just call this a brain dump. At the end of the night I would just write down everything that was inside my mind, because I would go to bed thinking please don't forget this, like please don't forget this, like I don't want to forget what's going on, or I don't want to forget I have to do this tomorrow. Write all that stuff down and that will help you get even a better, better night's sleep. It's kind of part of your nighttime routine, all right.
Speaker 1:And the last one that I would say is movement. This is why I'm such an advocate for exercise and working out. Exercising in itself releases natural dopamine that feel good hormone. It is going to. That's why we feel so good when we're done. You may not want to go at first, but you're just like man. I'm glad I did that and there's a whole reason why that you feel better. On top of, you know, releasing those endorphins. You feel accomplished, you did something, you served yourself, and so it really helps.
Speaker 1:But I also encourage you to do something else on top of working out is do some sort of light mobility. This could be yoga. If you want to do Pilates. That could potentially be something, but it's a good stress relief when you start to move your body with your breath work. It helps your lymphatic system and helps support your autoimmune system. Doing things like this will really help your body.
Speaker 1:So I would encourage you guys, maybe do five minutes of some sort of stretching, you know, and do some of those breathing techniques while you're stretching and you could do things like shoulder rolls, neck stretches, you know, just very mild, mild movements. Nothing crazy, not super. I wouldn't even consider it. I wouldn't even do like dynamic movements of like getting ready to work out and amping yourself up. Do things that just be in the moment and slow down. That, again, is just going to help give you some peace and just center you.
Speaker 1:And lastly this is kind of additional I started thinking about this because you know we're big with compounding, compounding habits, and this is a great one, because most of you, if you're trying to be healthy, one of the first things most people do is like I got to stop drinking these sodas, I got to stop drinking my calories and I'm gonna start hydrating, I'm going to drink more water, and you know what? I encourage it, I love it Drink more water. But now I'm going to, I'm going to add something to it. You're already drinking water, okay, so each time you drink water, take one slow breath before swallowing. It's just a really easy way to sneak some mindfulness into your day. And so you start to create these compounded habits. So every time you're drinking, you're kind of like getting recentered. It's just super simple, very, very simple things. But again you're starting to create and craft these routines that just seem more autonomous.
Speaker 1:Right, I do it now, like when I get in the car podcast. It's just, I don't even think about it anymore. It's like, okay, what are we putting on? Boom, put it on. I'm driving and I honestly, that is my favorite time to listen to podcasts, for whatever reason. That's where I'm most creative, uh, where I can really start thinking, being with my own thoughts. Even though I'm listening, it's just somebody will say something that triggers in my mind and sometimes, like I said, it's very creative. It's like, oh my gosh, like I just I got to write that down before I forget it. Or maybe it's me digging in deeper in myself, in my mind, and how I can just be a better individual. You know how I can serve others better. That in itself is very powerful too.
Speaker 1:So I say that to say listen, you guys are not alone. You know. You want to make sure that you get around people that support you, that encourage you. Get into a community that is people that are trying to do better for themselves. They're not always gossiping and talking about you know other people. I don't want to be around people like that and you don't either, cause if you're stressed and you got anxiety, last thing you want to do is people start word vomiting on you and just throw that on you and then it becomes like a war of whose life is worse. That is a miserable conversation. All right, I do not want to. I don't want to entertain it. Don't come to me for that. I will tell. We'll just walk away politely.
Speaker 1:Okay, so find that community. If you don't have one, we're here. Cac Performance is here. We're all going through it, we're all getting better together and we're just. We're building that community to support each other, because we understand life is hard. Life is hard right now it always has been but it doesn't mean that you can't come out on top. Sometimes you just need an extra hand that just gets you to where you want to be, so you can take off and take flight.
Speaker 1:So I'm here for it. I'm here to support you. I love you guys. I hope you guys have a better and more productive day. If you are going through some things and just know you can reach out to me on my social media. If you just want to chat, I'm here for it and I hope to continue to share with you guys some value that can help you get through any of the tough times that you're doing. Just because I'm a health and fitness coach, I don't want to just talk about working out and nutrition. Is it important? Yes, but your mindset is even more important, because when we're talking about sustainability and long-term success, we got to start dieting from the inside out. All right, guys. So I love you. Hope you have a good week, peace.