#9 Move It To Lose It: How To Turn Down The Volume On Stress, Anger, Burnout, and Anxiety By Moving Your Body And Being Destructive In a Healthy Manner
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In today’s episode of The Grit, Growth, and Gratitude Podcast, I share two very powerful and easy to do exercises to get you back to inner peace and happiness the next time any negative, overwhelming emotions are hitting hard.
This episode’s great for adults, but I also give examples of how to help your kiddos through these challenges as well for all my cycle-breaking parents out there.
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Episode #9 Transcription
Hello!
Joe here, and today I'm gonna be offering up two different exercises that you can do immediately the next time you're dealing with challenging life circumstances or difficult emotions. And I'm most likely gonna be dropping F bombs while I teach this stuff. So use your discretion while listening.
And so that being said, let me share with you that we are right in the middle of a series on how to beef up your emotional intelligence muscle.
and that is arguably the most important skill set that you will ever develop in order to crush your goals, be successful at work, have thriving relationships, and most importantly, meet your happiness potential. So if you haven't caught the previous episodes, then I would encourage you to go back and start at the beginning of this series.
I think it starts at episode number six of the podcast. It's the episode that's titled How to Ditch Stress Crush Your Goals, and Be Happy as Fuck. And if you have been hanging with me on this series, first of all, thank you very much, loyal listener. You are awesome.
And secondly, let's get to these exercises and to do that, go back to that example at the top of the episode where everything in your life is going sideways and you're starting to get really stressed out. You're starting to get overwhelmed, and you might even be beginning to lose your temper. What can you do in those circumstances?
You basically have a few choices and some are better than others. One option is you could just shove those feelings down, pretend that you don't have emotions, and that this stuff doesn't bother you at all. But if you've listened to any of my previous episodes of this podcast, then you know that that's a terrible option
And that I myself am a shiny example of how stuffing your feelings down, being unaware of them and pretending they don't exist always comes back to bite you in the ass sooner or later.
So what's your next option? Well, you could become totally dysregulated, lose your temper, lay on your horn, flip off other drivers. Snap at your loved ones. Maybe even punch a hole in the wall.
But that option obviously sucks too. It's emotional, rookie stuff, and it's harmful to your health and maybe to your relationships and your loved ones.
But there are way more effective methods to getting you back to the good vibes when you're stressed out.
So let's dig in. The first exercise is called move it to lose it, and it sounds very simple on the surface, but it is extremely powerful when you're starting to get overwhelmed by an emotion, like your anger is starting to turn into rage, or your sadness is starting to turn into depression, or your worry is starting to turn into anxiety and you can't quite calm your mind and create.
You simply go out and do some sort of physical activity and move your body, and obviously this is not gonna solve whatever problem you're facing and we're not dismissing it or ignoring it, but we're saying like, Hey brain, this is getting to be too much. Let's table this and go walk around the block. Go do some air squats, go do some pushups, go for a run, do some jumping jacks, just some sort of physical activity that you enjoy to calm your mind, create some space, distract yourself, and also get all of the other stuff that I don't quite understand, like dopamine and serotonin regulate in your brain, because although I don't exactly know how that works, I do know that those are the antidote to the negative emotions and the overwhelm, and this stuff works really well for both kids and adults.
And I'll give you examples of. My son loses his temper a lot and I can always tell right away when he's starting to get heated cuz his voice gets all aggro and his body language gets all tense. And so I'm like, dude, you're 50 pounds soaking wet. You're nine years old, I could fuck you up. You better take the base outta your voice when you're talking to me.
No, I'm just kidding. I don't say that. But I could fight fire with fire and demand compliance because I'm bigger and stronger than him and I'm the boss. But that doesn't teach him how to effectively manage his emotions.
And usually it gets really ugly and we start fighting and it gets big and loud. And I'm in a battle with my best buddy and it just sucks. And so I could try giving him a punishment, which might stop the behavior, although usually for him when he's going full tilt bananas, it doesn't really help anyways,, and again, it doesn't give him the tools to manage and regulate his own emotions and teach him emotional maturity, which at the end of the day is what I'm really striving for. But I'm also not overly permissive. There's boundaries in my household and there's logical consequences, and so what I usually do is first I tell him, Hey buddy, you're getting way too riled up, and the way you're talking to me or shouting at me is not acceptable. Do you want to have a consequence right now or do you want to talk about.
Or do you wanna move it to lose it? And almost every time he'll tell me, I wanna go jump on the trampoline. I wanna go run around. I wanna play soccer or whatever. And we don't pretend that the conflict didn't happen or we don't dismiss the emotional issue that caused him to lose his temper, or we don't ignore the fact that he was disrespectful and rude to me.
But we do table it for a few minutes until he is done spazzing out on the trampoline or running around or whatever. Or sometimes he wants to continue yelling at me and losing his temper and he won't do the move it to lose it. So I'm like, Hey dude, check this out. You can either have a consequence like lose screen time for a week.
Or you could do 50 burpees and then he'll like begrudgingly, almost always choose the burpees. And then when he is done, the volume is turned way down on his stress and his anger. And then I can connect with him and I can use logic and reasoning. And if we have to continue with more consequences because his behavior warranted it, then we do that.
But sometimes just the moving it to lose it and the talking is enough because it brings him back to clarity. And then he can make amends and tell me how he's gonna prevent the behavior from happening. And usually at that point, I'm proud of him for processing and regulating his emotions. We've reconnected.
He's given me a problem solving plan for how he's gonna prevent it from happening again. And in the end, I find this method is great. It's like a win-win because it's much less conflict and division between my son and I. But it's also super effective at gaining compliance and influence and growth and change, and developing his skillset and his maturity and his decision making and all the stuff that we're trying to do anyways.
But this exercise is definitely not just for kids. The same exact stuff goes for adults. And here's an extreme example of this. One of my really good friends who's also a firefighter, This guy is so gritty and tough. He used to do mma, he does triathlons. Like seriously. You cannot challenge how tough this guy is if you're thinking that this emotional processing stuff is for wimps and he's different than me.
Well, not just the fact that he's a savage and he's way tougher than me, but like we all de-stress and process different emotions differently. So I like to journal and I cry and I do all this emotional expressing. He is not into doing that stuff, but he is in tune with his feelings and he doesn't like having a temper, and he's had some trauma and some P T S D.
So when he starts to feel those big, heavy feelings creeping in and he's losing his temper, he's starting to feel overwhelmed. He's starting to feel burnt out. He'll go for a run. And the way he describes this to me is he pushes himself into the deep water. You don't have to do this, by the way, this guy's extreme.
But he will run and run and run until he is like beyond the red line to where he's gonna puke. And he pushes past these mental barriers until he's just like exhausted. And then he says he doesn't know if it's like the drowning call that he ran. Or trauma from when his dad died when he was younger. But he will get to a point where he won't be able to run anymore and then he'll just start crying.
And, and I know this sounds crazy, but it's awesome because those tears are one of the ways that our bodies and our minds purge the pain and the difficulty emotions and the traumas we've experienced. And when you've had one of those good cries, even if it's super uncomfortable, cuz you're not familiar with.
You feel like 10,000 pounds lighter. It is incredible. And those are just different examples. There's a million different ways to do this, and a lot of it's gonna depend on what works for you and what your emotional temperament is, and what type of exercise you like and how fit you are for him. He's like an elite athlete, so he runs like miles and miles of sprints until he cries.
For my son, it's playing soccer and jumping on the trampoline unless I'm making him do burpees. For you, it might just take walking around the block or like my go-to is yoga. But regardless if you're feeling overwhelmed or having rough circumstances, give this exercise a shot. Go out there and move it to lose it.
It might solve the problem entirely, like traffic is annoying. You start to get pissed off, you go for a run and you feel better. Or you might be dealing with some serious shit, and this doesn't make your problems go away, and it clearly doesn't fix all of the issues, but at least it's a first step to getting some space in your mind and moving the needle forward on feeling better, which is super important.
And that's gonna lead us to the second exercise. I like to call this the pressure relief valve. You ever see those big silver tanker trucks carrying fuel driving down the freeway? Well, if you look closely, those tanker trucks have a vent on top of them. It's called a pressure relief valve, and that valve pops open and the tanker off gases when the internal pressure gets to be too much.
So there's not a major explosion that kills everybody, which is awesome. Right? But unfortunately, As humans, we don't come with a pressure relief valve, but we need them too. If you don't do this in a healthy way, a lot of times it comes out, like I said, with emotional rookie adult temper tantrums. And I say this not from a judgmental standpoint, if you go listen to episode number four of this podcast, I share with embarrassing and authentic detail how I used to scream at my wife.
I punched holes in walls. I was a shiny example of doing this stuff in an unhealthy way, and this is one of the tools that helped me correct that. And it's also helped my family and a lot of my friends, and this applies to a lot of different overwhelming emotions, but it's especially helpful with anger.
And remember, even if your anger is justified, it's wise to let that shit. because anger is like holding onto hot coals. You're the only person who's gonna get burned that dickhead who cut you off in traffic. That's one assault on your wellbeing. But now he's at home chilling with his girlfriend eating a steak dinner, and you're like fuming.
You can't get over it. So now he's up on you two to zero because you gave up your power. The only real power that you have, which is not to control circumstances. , but to control how you respond to circumstances and how much you let those negative emotions affect your wellbeing and being angry sucks so bad.
As I mentioned, I used to live in it, so I know, and the contrast between having tranquility and inner peace and joy is huge, and I want that transformation for. , but it doesn't just go away and resolve on its own anger demands to be processed, experienced, and released. So that's why we're gonna develop our pressure relief valves.
And just like with physical fitness, there's a million different ways to get fit and what works for you might be different than what works for me. But I'm gonna share a handful of different effective methods and you can experiment on what's the most effective pressure relief valve for you. One method is getting destructive, which is awesome.
I'm all about the punk rock chaos, but you gotta do it in a way that doesn't cause injury to yourself. A family member, a loved one property doesn't damage your relationships or get you arrested. There's healthy and legal ways to satisfy that impulse to rage up like the fucking incredible Hulk when you're mad.
because like that tanker truck, you're about to explode and you gotta get that out. So in my case, I've been practicing this stuff for so long and I'm just like so chill and meditative that I very rarely lose my temper. But I'm a human and it still happens from time to time. I have kids if you know, you know, And so what I do is I go outside and I beat the shit out of my punching bag.
I hit it so hard that my fucking neck hurts, my hands hurt, and I'm exhausted. . But when I'm done, I guess that's a combo of move it to lose it and a pressure relief valve. But when I'm done, dude, that rage is dissipated and instead of turning like my family or the guy who cut me off in traffic into a proverbial punching bag, I'm using the real punching bag, which is what it's designed for.
This method works well for my son too. And if you have teenage boys or younger boys who are like hormonal. That testosterone is gonna make them want to go crazy. It's good to teach them healthy and non-destructive outlets for that anger. In fact, have you ever seen the movie office space? If you haven't, go watch it.
Trust me, you won't regret it. And there's a scene where these guys just beat the shit out of a Xerox machine. Well, depending on where you live, there's places called Rage rooms where you can actually go destroy property legally. But you can also chop wood. You can hit a tire with a sledgehammer or a baseball bat, like I said, a punching bag.
There's lots of ways you can do this. And another one that seems kind of silly, but hey man, having adult temper tantrums is silly too. So this works for a lot of people, is to scream and yell into a pillow. So my daughter likes this method, and when she's so mad, If she's mature and grounded enough to say, dad, I'm feeling some rage.
I need to scream into a pillow, then she knows it's fair game. She can cuss, she can say whatever she wants. So she's like, so she'll let out like a blood curdling scream. And if that pillow wasn't there, it would be brutal. Listen to, and she'll be like, you motherfucker, I hate you, blah, blah, blah. And I know that that's weird.
I let my 11 year old drop MF bombs. But it's a safe and healthy way to vent her anger. And when she's done, she's like bright red and huffing and puff. But like within a minute or two, it's out of her system. And then she'll talk to me or she'll go write in her journal or she'll call a friend or whatever, but she's using that pressure relief valve and it turns the volume down so much.
And obviously this might be embarrassing to do. I'm probably the only grown man who will get out on a public forum and be like, yeah, I scream into a pillow. So, But try it. Do it when nobody's watching, drop those hot coals, man. You deserve it. And the third pressure relief valve tool I'm gonna teach you today is literally venting like those tanker trucks.
And a lot of us think we're venting, but we're more like the tanker truck that has a slow leak, any spill and fuel slowly all over the road. That's when you get like caught up with negativity, you gossip, you complain, and you're internalizing and externalizing negativity, and that's no good either. And so you're gonna either find a really awesome ride or die homie who you can be vulnerable and authentic in front of.
Or if you don't have one of those, you can use a journal, a Word document, a voice recorder, and you can delete the court recording right away. And whatever is causing you to be stressed, sad, worried, anxious, angry, you're gonna use what I call your journal voice. And your journal voice is not your mature, true, north real voice.
It's like your inner child, inner teenager. Nasty, angry, childlike, authentic, irritated, stressed out self. And that's a part of ourselves that we don't often tap into. , but he needs to be acknowledged and released. So what this looks like in real life for me is I call up my buddy Brandley. He doesn't judge me.
He knows all about the journal voice. He's into therapy and stuff too. And I'm like, Hey man, I gotta do an authentic journal voice vent. And he's like, go ahead. And what that means is he's gonna listen to me. I'm gonna say some immature, angry shit. He's not gonna judge me and he's not gonna try and give advice.
I just need to voice this stuff. I'm just like, oh, I'm so fucking annoyed with my kids. I hate being a dad. And he's. I'm sorry, man, that sucks. And he knows I fucking love being a dad. I don't hate my kids, but getting that off of my chest, expressing my raw, immature, authentic, nasty emotions. Fills my cup up.
So ironically, I can pour out to my kids when they get home from school and I can reconnect and love on them. And also just for me. I wanna get back to feeling the good vibes. And that's what I want for you too. And for whatever reason and the way the brain works, those emotions don't get released unless you just use your most vulnerable, authentic.
Gritty, selfish, emotional, immature voice. So learn to tap into that and develop that voice and find healthy ways of processing and getting these thoughts and feelings out. I guarantee you, you'll feel better and you'll enjoy life more. And so as we close out today, I just want to hit the quick bullet points that we went over.
Stress, anger, anxiety, worry. . Those are natural parts of the human experience. You're gonna feel 'em, but you don't have to hold onto them, and you don't have to let them overwhelm you or hamper your good vibes. But you do have to process and release them. And a really effective way to do that is move it to lose it.
Get out there and get some exercise, find something to do that's physical that you enjoy. That creates space, gives you an endorphin rush, and helps you settle your mind and your emotions. The other way is to develop your pressure relief valve. You don't wanna be a leaky, gossipy, complaining negative tanker truck who's spilling fuel all over the place and.
You don't want to be so pressurized that you explode and you can't control your temper. So find ways to physically exert your rage in a healthy, non-destructive, legal, non-toxic way by punching a punching bag or yelling into a pillow or vent to a friend, or a journal, or a voice recorder. In your most gritty, authentic, vulnerable, emotionally charged voice.
If you hit the links in the show notes, I got a free ebook, meditations. I got a whole bunch of resources to help you out in this journey. These are just a few exercises, and before we close out entirely today, I want to ask you to do something. Follow me on Instagram and connect. I've been getting a lot of questions about emotional fitness and conscious parenting and anger management and all this stuff I'm talking about.
And in a few episodes I'm gonna do a q and A where I just answer your questions directly and hopefully more specifically. And if you shoot me a quick voice memo on the Instagram direct messaging, I might play your question on the podcast and give you a direct answer, which is fun. We're building a community here.
Big hearted, badass warriors, not warriors. And so all that being said, thank you so much for listening to this episode. You're awesome. Go out there and develop your pressure relief out so that you can kick ass, have fun, enjoy life, and thrive in your relationships. Until next time, stay calm and stay strong.
Peace.
