Dr. Travis Parry (00:01.144)
Hello. Get stressed much. Listen, I am so excited to talk to you today about stress, stress, coping, stress relief, where it actually comes from the root causes and what you can do to put in place some very simple, sets of programming and systems to help you deal with that. So welcome to the Travis Perry show. And I'm so excited to talk to you about all this today. You know, I, I have.

interviewed and coached over 3000 business owners to this point in my career. And I know for a fact that all business owners have some level of stress. It doesn't matter if you're starting up the business, if you are growing it, if you're trying to scale, if you're trying to exit or give it to the next generation or sell it all some point in your life, you are dealing with stress now.

I started this journey learning about stress because of two things. My clients in the financial world, my financial planning clients were dealing with this financial stress. And then I saw it in my own life and family. And I said, gee, I want to figure this out. I want to get deep into understanding part of my training. I came across this pattern. Now I, I'm

I don't necessarily great at inventing things, but I find patterns in life and there is a prayer. You know, I'm a big believer in prayer and journaling and, uh, you know, positive values, affirmations, which I highly, highly recommend that you have. I talk all about it in my book, achieving balance. You can find this on the podcast earlier on as well. Um, but there is a prayer. not necessarily a huge fan of.

wrote prayers, believe in prayer is a two-way relationship that you have with God that you can develop. But there is a rote prayer that I found very helpful in my life as I was dealing with stress as clients were trying to cope with. Now stress really has two main components. It could be

Dr. Travis Parry (02:20.334)
negative stress which we call distress or it could be positive stress like eustress Distress example could be financially speaking bankruptcy, right if you're going through bankruptcy, there's a lot of distress and Eustress or the good type of stress might be that you know, you're getting married having a child maybe you know just

one of these, you know, awesome, amazing euphoric things, but still cause your brain stress. Regardless, what's fascinating to me is that the brain, even though one is good, one might not be so good. You value them differently, right? You don't want to go through bankruptcy. You want to get married, et cetera. The brain still takes on the stress load similar. It still takes on the stress load very similar because of how

our brains are developed, how we are programmed, and it's fascinating. So that said, I'm not going to dive deep into, you know, these similarities or differences. I just kind of want to throw that out there a little bit on my previous podcast. I talked about it just barely, but I will say that if we know how to cope with these stressors, whether they're good or bad, if we have a pattern in place,

It can help us to cope. Now, I believe coping is the like one of the first mechanisms. If we can cope emotionally with what's going on, then we can logically and even subconsciously get to the root of the issue. But we have to stop the bleeding, right? If you think about it, it's like triage, you know, somebody's really hurt. You get them to triage, you get them to the emergency room and figure out what's going on or.

Assess it right there on the situation. Like what do we do now? What's the most important thing? Well, we got to stop the bleeding and get them get them to breathe. Like what is the most important thing here? So that's what we're doing with this pattern that I discovered. I call it the serenity pattern. Now, some of you have heard of the serenity prayer. It's a lot of times is hanging on a wall someplace at your grandma's or your mother-in-law's place or, or, or you've seen it at,

Dr. Travis Parry (04:41.588)
various church functions in in chapels or maybe at AA or something like that and it's typically Attributed to unknown author man that guy he is He's loaded because he's attributed to a lot of different things I actually did a whole bunch of searching on this and went down the rabbit hole to find that there's actually a German priest named Reinhold Nibor

Now my German's not the best, I speak Danish, but Reinhold Neibour, or Niebuhr, is probably how they would say it. He has a rote prayer that I thought was fascinating. Again, it's used in churches all over the place, and it has three paragraphs. I want to explain this to you. The first paragraph goes like this. God grant me the serenity.

to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Now, I like to use this example. I love you, grandma, and we'll see you on the other side. She's passed away, but years and years ago, when I was learning these concepts, I found that I would get phone calls from her concerned about a grandchild or somebody in the family. And oftentimes she was calling

to express concern and I knew she was doing that and I love her for it. But I have a great relationship with her. I spoke her native tongue which is Danish because I served in a mission in Denmark and I have constantly kept up that language as best I can. And so I could talk to her very bluntly and very frankly. And those of you that understand the Danish culture, that is true. You can speak blunt and you can speak frank to people. I wish in America we would...

do this more, we'd solve a lot of problems. But she called me said, Travis, there's this issue in this person and blah, blah. And I finally said, Grandma, I love you. And in Danish I said, can you control any of this? She took a deep breath and I remember her saying, I can hear a voice. She's like, no. And then I said, so then.

Dr. Travis Parry (07:07.466)
Why are you trying to change it? She sat back. I could hear her thinking on the phone. You're right. And I said, grandma, it's just causing you stress. It's causing you anxiety, stress, anxiety, and depression, stress, anxiety, depression. It spells sad. We talk about the standard American diet. Well, there's also the mental health.

common colds of stress, anxiety, and depression. Both are sad. And quite honestly, we can have a whole episode about how the standard American diet, eating processed foods all the time, eating out high oil content, very little nutrition that we actually absorb in our bodies from the non-organic materials, even grown plant-based materials.

that because of GMOs and everything actually get into our body and stick and help us to think clearly. There is a ton of research out about it maybe I'll do another podcast on that. But all that said is that hyper activates stress. It doesn't allow us to deal with it very well. And some of us overeat or not eat at all. And then we binge and purge and there's all sorts of eating disorders that are typically

you know, related, but stress comes first typically. And when we stress about it over and over and over again, it can create anxiety, high levels of anxiety that can be diagnosed. And then eventually even for long periods of time, depression and depression can put us into this funk that we just can't get out of for weeks and months at a time. All right. So if I look at this very first paragraph,

we can see a pattern. It's a prayer for peace. Serenity is another word for peace. Don't we have need of peace today? I do. You know, we've got war, have rumors of war, we have financial instability. We've got all sorts of things coming at us. On top of that, we're trying to run our businesses and be there for our family members, all of these stressors, right? So we're asking...

Dr. Travis Parry (09:33.613)
in this prayer to grant me peace, grant us peace, but to accept the things we cannot change. So if grandma can't change her grandson or granddaughter, whoever it was that she was concerned about, she can't change that behavior. Okay. Then talking about it, involving other people, complaining and discussing even about other people's issues is never going to fix the problem.

It just actually creates more stress. Now this could be the same for work relationships. It could be client, you know, negative client interaction, whatever. If all we do is complain about it and it's going nowhere. There is a phenomenal book out there called A Complaint Free World. Oftentimes I'll recommend it to my clients. I try to listen to it every so often to remind me how what's coming out of my mouth is actually

you know, a completed thought that Alfred Bandura used to say, you know, thought isn't complete until it's spoken. Because once we speak it and once we complain about something and it becomes reality and we believe it, and there's a whole bunch of subconscious, you know, level three discussion on this. If you're not sure about the levels, go back to my previous podcast and pick those out levels one through four.

This is very much a level two discussion today about these emotions, but if we can understand what is it that we can change, what is it that we cannot change, and at least ask ourself if there's a stress that comes up, what can I do about it? Is it something I can change? Is this something that I can't? Now, the next two lines are courage to change the things I can, so courage. Think about the Scriptures.

I believe that one of the most, you know, I guess repeated patterns throughout any scripture is to not fear, have courage. You know, in our home, we like to quote scriptures from various sources of scripture and we kind of rotate them through depending on the week. And, you know, there are a lot of scriptures that we've memorized that it's about taking action, having

Dr. Travis Parry (11:56.719)
courage and trusting God. Right? So, you know, that's, that's a really big theme, I believe, and pattern that I've seen throughout scripture. So if it's something we can change, an example might be, gee, I would like someday to be a, you know, a thought leader in my industry, in my space. Okay. So I hear this from business owners all the time.

And I asked them, did you know that writing a book is the single most effective way to be considered a thought leader? This is why in 2020, I finally had the courage to write my book. Now, technically I wrote it in 2019 and then I found out I didn't do it the right way. So I rewrote it. So this is my second manuscript. My first manuscript is hanging out there somewhere. I need to find it. Actually, I think I found it a few months ago. You know, I'm getting down a rabbit hole here, but I

Had the courage to say, I'm going to do it. Okay. And I actually published it. This is only something that only 1 % of the population ever does less than, might even be less than 1 % at this point, actually publish a book. Now we live in a time where, you know, getting published is no longer an issue. You can self publish still the rates of those that publish a book are slim and none. Okay.

So that's actually the first thing that, I, I suggest thought leaders do write a book, then turn that book into a keynote that will knock the socks off people and then turn that keynote into podcast interviews, into webinars, into retreat, events into live other live events. Like you use the book for everything. I have a whole training on that. Likely I will.

Um, throughout here on the podcast in the future, um, it's going to be a big part of, my next book. So I'm excited to share that with you. So if that's the case, like you have the courage, you've got to do something that you know, you should be doing, like writing a book or writing a speech or getting on a podcast. If you want to be a thought leader, right? What is it you need to do? Start doing that. Just go that direction. Have courage to do it. Second.

Dr. Travis Parry (14:22.988)
You need to have the wisdom or excuse me, third, you need to have the wisdom to know the difference between what you cannot change and what you need to have courage to go and do. Cause if you have to go the courage to go and try to change things that you can't change, well, then you're going to constantly be kicking your head against the wall or kicking your foot against the wall, banging your head against the wall. There we go. It's something like that. It's going to be painful. Okay. It's going to cause you stress lead to anxiety and ultimately depression.

Possibly anyway, it happens if we just persist long enough against this. Likewise, if you just accept that you're not gonna have courage to do things you wanna change, you're never going to do the thing. You'll never grow the business, you'll never scale it, you'll never exit it because you played it safe. You didn't take the risk involved of sticking your neck out there because you didn't have the courage.

Okay. So a lot of what I'm trying to get at here, this is not just coping and this is not just a mechanism to help you, which is very much can be, they can help you to take the steps of the things you know you should be doing. Now, what I love these next two paragraphs is beautiful. It's very much, and this was written like in the 1800s, living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

So living one day at a time, living in the present, enjoying one moment at a time, get off your phone, be there with people, right? I hear this all the time. Be with the people you love and accepting hardships as pathways to peace. Think about that. Um, we tend to sometimes think it, Oh, there's a challenge is a hardship that something's coming yet that, that actual hardship, that actual challenge could actually be an answer. Uh, sometimes we think, well,

Well, God, I've prayed for this. I've asked you for this. I want this. Here's my goal. Here's the thing that I really want. But a challenge comes to that goal. And if we're not careful, we look at that and say, well, that's not what I prayed for. That's not what I wanted for. That's not what I hoped for. That's not what I'm setting my goals. Like this is preventing me. It might actually be that very thing that teaches you a lesson so that you can accomplish the goal you had set out for yourself.

Dr. Travis Parry (16:53.174)
I think of some of the best motivational movies and don't they always have this storyline? Like it is the classic storyline of set out on an adventure and you know, we can talk about Lord of the Rings. Like this is classic. It's also a classic way to write a speech by the way, drop a hint on this. Okay. You've got an unlikely hero that sets out on an adventure, has a mentor along the way.

has some challenges to face, but through those challenges learns lessons that allows the person to become the hero. It's called the hero's journey. It's Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, like we could go on and on. Like all these incredible books and stories follow the storyline of the hero's journey. So I love this concept of like, well, yeah, hardships will come. Don't look at hardships as

Well, that must mean that I shouldn't do the thing that I set out to do. Wrong. You set out to do the thing, to set the goal, to become that value because you were inspired. Because God told you to. Because you're following your values and becoming the person you were meant to be. Okay. So the challenge has come so you can learn from them. Look at Frodo. Right? He leaves the Shire.

He has Gandalf the gray at that point as his mentor, like giving them a little bit. You need to get going. You need to, take your friend and, and, and you need to take care of this ring, right? You get destroyed. Well, along the way they're met by challenge after challenge. You know, there's all sorts of things. And I'm not a Lord of the rings expert, but what I remember from it, I'm actually listening to it with my son right now and on book, which is so much more exciting. Quite honestly, the movie's great, but

The book has all these intricate details. But I mean, there are orcs and there are others that pretend to be on his side that try to take the ring. Like there's all sorts of things throughout this entire adventure that drags on for several books and movies. They get to finally see how he has the courage to be able to do what he needs to do at the end. Okay. All right. So that's just the second paragraph. Third paragraph, taking as he did, meaning Christ.

Dr. Travis Parry (19:17.154)
this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that he, Christ, will make all things right if I surrender to his will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him forever in the next. This last paragraph, again, trusting God and surrendering to his will. I think this is a key concept. When we set a goal, when we

put it out there when we are excited to make some change in our life. And then we see challenges. if we don't accept them, like that's the second paragraph, right? If we don't accept them as, this is going to help us to get to achieve this piece. But then the third paragraph is like, this is really all about surrender. How do we surrender to God's will for us? Yes. Go achieve, be motivated.

Set your goals, do all the things, right? As long as it's in line with God's will, then you will have his blessing. You will have his love, his protection, and you're going to be on his side, right? We have stories after story in the Bible. Can't help think of Joshua, right? And the great battle of Jericho, and he did what God wanted him to do.

circled the city seven times, blew on the trumpets, yelled, and these incredibly ginormous ancient walls fell down. Why? Well, Joshua did what God wanted him to do. It may or may not have been anything to do with what they did, but the fact that they did it made the walls come tumbling down. So I think oftentimes

We believe that, gee, so, because I set this goal, there's not going to be any opposition. And I'm just going to go tackle everything if, if for that personality. Um, and you know, and, and who, you know, God must've said, is for me. So I'm going to go after it I'm going to do it. Uh, but to be, to be able to surrender and say, okay, God, how would you have me do this? What's the right way? You know, uh, this, you know, Joshua trying to tell his people to do

Dr. Travis Parry (21:42.851)
this weird thing walking around the city and then, you know, for, think for seven days, right? Seven times. And then blowing on Trump is like, that's bizarre. That's not how you, that's not how you go in and take over a people or destroy, you know, people like this is so weird, but they did it God's way. So are you trying to do it your way? Are you trying to do it the way that God would have you do it? So I love this prayer, this serenity prayer ends with a, know, an amen and amen.

Because the first paragraph is all about emotional control. Can you control the situation? If you know, if you're going to be able to have a, an outcome that, that you can be a part of, are you a variable that if you insert yourself, you can change this. If not, don't right. That's it's a quick, let's, let's keep you out of stress. Let's keep you out of anxiety. keep you out of depression.

But if there are things you need to change, you want to, you know, try to achieve a goal and you write down the things you need to change. We'll do it. Have the courage to get up and do it. I didn't want to do this podcast. I've been doing this for five years now. We have over 240 episodes. I started it and stopped after six episodes, scratched it, threw it away, brought it back, started again, changed it several times.

I've tried to start a more gospel centered podcast that is just, I can't figure out how to integrate that. So I've just kind of come back to this and said, Hey, I'm going to involve everything. I'm going to put it right out here. I'm just going to, this is Travis Perry. This is Dr. Perry. This is what I believe. This is what I'm throwing at you to help you improve, grow and scale and stay balanced and have great relationships with your family. Okay. And I've used this pattern.

throughout my life. Now here's the thing. I get these questions and you know, that's the prayer. I kind of look at these three paragraphs. Well, what is the actual pattern that you can take? The pattern that you can take away is number one, you need to ask yourself this question when things approach you. Okay. This is about trying to cope with, with outside forces. Like what, what's going on? Can I change the situation? If yes, have the courage to do it.

Dr. Travis Parry (24:06.942)
If not, let it go. Right. have a whole Disney movie about letting go. it really is about surrender. Just let it go. Let go and let God. I believe Jim Rohn says that, and I may be incorrect on that, but let go and let God, that's, that's, that's whole surrender paragraph. So two, if you're unable to have the courage to do it,

or you're unable to let it go, then you need to do some deeper subconscious work, which is more of a level three if you've listened to the previous podcast. And in level three, we go through and figure out, what's actually stopping you? Where are you getting to that is so deeply entrenched in your subconscious? It's stuck there. Because for most people, they want to have the courage to go and do the thing. They want to have the courage to go and make a change.

And they want to be able to let things go. Think about forgiveness as one. A lot of people really struggled to forgive. Really, really, really struggle. I have found that throughout scripture and with great business owners that I've interviewed and others, they don't hold grudges. They just don't. They create boundaries. And I believe this is a great way to hold.

onto people that have hurt you that have Maybe not dealt fairly with you is to not hold a grudge It takes up space in your mind. It takes up space in your heart. It takes up happiness and peace Which is what we want. We want peace Most people are talking most business owners we talked about getting past their stressors and getting to the next level in the business Etc because they want that peace. They want a peaceful process so that they

be less stressed. Again, not all stress is bad, Distress is the one that can be cantankerous and over time really erode us and give us heart disease and cancers and all the things. Okay, we know that. But eustress situations, if we take an unburdened load, for example, we're in the midst of planning a wedding right now. I'm the dad, my wife's involved in most of these.

Dr. Travis Parry (26:34.008)
Decisions stuff if that becomes your whole life and you try to change everything and control everything That's part of that process. You're likely gonna stress yourself out for a good thing Okay, we went back to the you know bankruptcy, you know idea there the distress and and marriage as the eustress situation so what what we need to ask yourself is what can we change and If we need to have the courage to do it

And go do that thing. If we need to let it go, let it go. Again, back to this forgiveness concept. I just kind of went full circle on this. To let go is to let God. And forgiveness is a concept that quite honestly leads to great mental health outcomes. When we're able to just forgive other people, we're able to let go of what they've done. Let go of the hurt. Literally let it go from our body.

from our mind, from our spirit. That doesn't mean that if you forgive someone that they are right. This was something that I had to learn in my adulthood was I thought a lot of times if I say I'm sorry to someone that would admit, excuse me, if I'm forgiving somebody that somehow it was admitting that I was also at fault. Yeah.

I had some stuff and I've been working through this, but I believe that forgiving people allows God to help them in their life, allows to just let go. And even if they have wronged you, I think that's, that's the key. There's a situation with a family member who had wronged me greatly. And, I'm sure everyone can relate.

And I chose to eventually realize that I've been holding onto this for years and it's created a stressful situation every time I see the person and da da. I finally went to the person and said, I forgive you for, for anything, you know, for, for these things. I, I, I hold nothing against, you know, anything that you've done. And quite honestly, that person mocked me and said I was weak and that, you know, tried to shame that outcome.

Dr. Travis Parry (28:57.864)
and I figured that's probably how it was going to go, but I wanted that person to know that I forgave and then I could let go the piece that I felt by just letting go, regardless of the interaction after or anytime after, was, was wonderful. But I suggest you then you create boundaries. I don't believe that we should just forgive and not.

Protect especially as fathers. We need to teach our children to forgive others but protect ourselves so that a we won't end up in that situation again with somebody who could abuse us or hurt us or shame us or other things. So if it is something business related a lot of times it's you know, I just was talking to a client the other day who you know about lawsuits about people that have wronged him.

in his work in his line of work and now that's pretty common in that industry. And not saying you don't, you know, protect yourself and if they're going to sue you, protect yourself so that you can be a provider for your family. But even in that situation, you can still forgive that person. That's a whole other like a whole other comment and spiritual, but I think also mental

health related tool to learn to let it go. Well, that's what I have for today. if you struggle with, not having the courage because of subconscious blocks, it's typically those things, right? Those, those limiting blocks and fears and belief systems that are really, really ingrained since childhood typically, or if you're not able to let go, you're not able to forgive somebody for something.

business, personal, whatever, it's going to take up space here. It's going to give you stress. It will literally put stress on places in your body. I just talked to a client about this the other day. He gets a pain in his neck and shoulders and some people like they hold it in their chest and it leads to all sorts of physical health problems. A lot of times we go to the doctor and we try to say, doc, I'm hurting this way. And sometimes like this and you know,

Dr. Travis Parry (31:23.346)
A lot of that could be coming from how we hold stress in our body, where we hold it. And it might not be something we necessarily consciously choose. It happens subconsciously, but it happens nonetheless. And every single client I've ever walked through this system, they tell me exactly where they're holding their stress, where it is hurting them. And I am on a mission to help business owners to get

past these issues to have courage and let things go that they need to let go and let God so that they can accomplish what they're needing to do in their life. It's been a mission of mine since my father passed away and I will continually do this until I'm no longer able or have other things I need to be doing that God's called me to. If you're struggling with this, if you tried this out, you've done this before or

You try this serenity pattern and it is just not working. We need to talk on a level three level, which is really hard to do in a podcast setting, but happy to do this in a personal setting. Email me at travis at balance growth inc.com or travis at travis perry with an a.com and let's chat. Let's see if we can help you. My team can help you to get on the right path. Get past.

these stressors, these anxiety causing problems in your life. So you can get out of this funk and 10x your business and blow up what you're doing. I'm going to end with this, you know, quote, talked about this in my previous podcast, but it's really, really sticking with me. Tony Robinson, all of the coaching he's ever done has found that 80 % of his clients success has come from their mental mind, you know, their, their mental mastery, their mind mastery.

And 20 % comes from their systems, their marketing, their teams, their sales, et cetera, their fulfillment. 20 % comes from the systems they set up. We spend so much energy, time, resources on that 20%. How much are you spending on your own mental mastery? What do you need to do to unlock to get to this next level? Because likely you're the one holding yourself back. You're typically the one stressing yourself out, giving yourself anxiety, causing...

Dr. Travis Parry (33:49.59)
these depression periods in your life as a business owner because of things that you can't change and you wish you could because you don't have the courage or the things you just can't let go of because they hurt so bad. Let me help you. Let's see if we're a good fit to do this. We have free consultations with people who sign up. Go to just send me an email. Travis at balancegrowthinc.com and let's see how we can help you. Until next time.

Remember, live life on purpose together.

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