Dr. Annie White’s Transformative Stress Management Strategies

Bothered by stress? Discover transformative stress management strategies like Dr. Annie White's unconventional breathing technique that will leave you feeling relaxed and ready to take on the world. Show Notes | Transcript "Stress triggers us to always consider worst case scenarios, which is fabulous if there's a bear chasing us, but for everyday fears, you don't need it." - Dr. Annie White     Dr. Annie White is a trailblazer in the health industry. Her background in traditional Chinese medicine and her extensive study in the realm of neuroplasticity have allowed her to develop a revolutionary approach to stress management. Dr. White's ability to treat patients holistically and delve into the root of the issues has played an instrumental role in her success. Her book, "The Calm Code: Transform Your Mind and Change Your Life,” provides tangible solutions to the problems many grapple with daily. In this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast, Dr. White shares her journey into traditional Chinese medicine and how she discovered the connection between stress and overall well-being. She explains that every thought, action, and emotion wires the mind along corresponding pathways, and she researched and developed techniques to wire the brain for calmness and happiness. In this episode, you will be able to: Cultivate tools for managing stress and fostering inner calmness. Embrace the profound impacts of heeding your gut-instincts. Experience the ripple effect of channeling positivity through affirmations and gratitude. Grasp the pivotal role that conscious thought plays in constructing your reality. Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: Business without Burnout: Techniques for Entrepreneurs to Manage Stress and Thrive In this episode, you'll learn the benefits of taking a mental health break. Turn Post Traumatic Stress into Growth with Cathay Reta Author Cathay Reta shares the importance of listening to the voice inside you. How to Clear Stress in 3 Minutes or Less with Joy Stress and Trauma expert Joy explains what happens when we listen to our bodies and give them what they need. Resources: Connect with Dr. Annie White here Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand Namaste. I am Gloria Grace, the Light Messenger and creator of the L.O.V.E. Method. And for those of you who might be joining us for the first time and haven't heard of me, let me tell you who I am a little bit more about what I do. So women entrepreneurs hire me to clear the inner blocks, keeping you stuck so you can put yourself first and live the life you want now. And I am so delighted to have with us a guest today that I'm going to be bringing on who has developed a revolutionary step by step method to minimize stress and maximize happiness based on the science of neuroplasticity. And she holds a doctorate in traditional Chinese medicine and is the author of The Calm Code - Transform Your Mind and Change Your Life. So I'm going to bring her on right now, and I want to welcome you officially Dr. Annie White to Live, Love, Engage. Dr. Annie White Well, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. I love your show. Gloria Grace Rand Well, thank you so much. I know we I believe we met through a publicity summit not too long ago, and I was intrigued by what you have to offer and about this book. And I thought, though, before we get into this method that you developed to really help people, to minimize stress, which is something we all need to do from time to time, is just share a little bit about your background. And certainly, what got you interested in, number one, traditional Chinese medicine, and then eventually, what led you to even write a book? Dr. Annie White That's a great question. Traditional Chinese medicine came about because I was making a huge career change, and I knew I wanted to help people. I just didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. And at the time, I was working for a nonprofit, and I loved the idea of the job and I didn't like the logistics, the day to day of the job. They wanted me to run it for them, and it was constantly fundraising and it just didn't resonate with me. And at the same time, I took an overview class in traditional Chinese medicine and how it worked. And it was at the school that I went and eventually got my master's degree, and it just resonated with me because we were treating people on the mind, body, spirit level, and it was all intertwined and I loved that. And we were also treating the root cause of things instead of symptoms. It made so much sense to me, and I fell in love and I signed up for a four year master's degree program and then went on to do a two year doctorate on top of it. So that's how I got into Chinese medicine. And as I was treating patients and I was seeing that high stress and anxiety was affecting my patients and their health so much, and I knew if I didn't find a way to dramatically decrease their stress and anxiety, no one would ever be happy or, quite frankly, healthy. So I did a deep dive into the science of the brain and the root cause of why we get stressed. And it's based on our thoughts. And most people don't realize this, but according to the science of neuroplasticity, every thought, action and emotion wires your mind, trains your mind along those corresponding pathways. So after a stressful period, if you've had a lot of stressful thoughts, you've inadvertently been building that stress area of your mind so that your thoughts tend to go there more quickly. So after I figured that out, then I researched ways to have the reverse happen. So how do we build a relaxed and happy mind? And that's what I figured out. Gloria Grace Rand Wow. And it's so true because I know from my experience in the past when, let's say, just something happens that disappoints you, and you can, I’ve had, shall we say, not healthy crutches to lean on, like overeating is one in particular. And it just has been my default for so long that it took me quite a while to be able to not go to those old methods of being able to handle things and to be able to come up with new and more empowering ways to go. And sometimes I still kind of slip back into old patterns. So can you talk a little bit about maybe just talk a little bit more about why, say, the experience that I've had of sometimes I can kind of get over it, but sometimes I don't? Is that something maybe that you've seen a lot of it and then we can talk a little bit more about how you've been able to help people to kind of rewire the brain in a more positive manner? Dr. Annie White Yeah. Habits are also a wiring of sorts, and I think it's going to depend on your trigger. You might notice that if it's a more stressful thing setting you off, it's harder to resist that barrier. It's harder because it's really been ingrained in you over the years. And everybody I mean, we're all human. We all have our ways of coping. So it shows itself in so many different ways and so many different people. And I think you'll notice that it does correspond with the level of stress, the level of disappointment, the level of unsatisfaction that you're feeling. Right? Gloria Grace Rand Yeah. Yes. Dr. Annie White It’s true. And it's rewiring those pathways so that that stress doesn't hit you as hard. Right. Once your mind has been trained to be more calm and happy, stressful things hit us in a different way. It's more balanced. It doesn't set us on like a stress, anxiety or worry pattern right away. Gloria Grace Rand So can you share with us maybe at least one or two things that you discovered that would help people to be able to minimize stress? Dr. Annie White Absolutely. And what I did was so I went through all of the research and things like looking at pictures, especially pictures of nature, but also pictures that make you smile, that make you laugh. Imagining your best possible self. So imagining future scenarios where you're your best possible self. Gratitude has been proven to make people 25% happier. But why is that? It's because it has wired their mind to be 25% happier. Visualization is another one. Visualization can really trigger those calm and happy parts of the brain. So what I did is I uncovered these and then I combined them into tools that use more than one at a time, usually three plus at a time together. Gloria Grace Rand Very cool. So one of the things that I know that I have used tremendously that are a couple of my go-to's are like meditation and journaling because as a matter of fact, it was like yesterday I had a disappointing event happen. And so I really consciously worked hard at like, okay, what can I do today that's going to be better? Let me journal for a little while. Okay. And then I felt better. And then it kind of got sad again and was like, okay, what else can I do? Let's see, let me see. I can maybe meditate. So are those things some of the things that you recommend to do or what other things that you recommend folks do? Dr. Annie White Yeah, I mean, definitely meditation has been proven to train your mind to be more relaxed. I love the journaling. I love affirmations. I'm trying to recall all of the tools that I included in the book because there are a lot of them. There are so many ways to ignite those pathways, those calm, those relaxed, those happy pathways in your mind. And that's what you're trying to do. You could watch a funny YouTube video. I mean, that could do it too. Or a comedian that could help. Gloria Grace Rand Oh, yeah, absolutely. I definitely… laughter goes a long way towards helping you to improve your mood. What's been the maybe biggest challenge that you faced in you