The Allo - what now?
Courtesy Z-Health Performance
The Allo - what now?
By Shane Sauer
Do you know what your Allostatic Load is?
Aside from being a weird word, it’s the wear and tear put on your mind and body in your everyday life. Or more simply, your baseline stress level.
As a human being, you can only handle so much stress. I like to think about how much stress I can handle as a “Stress Bucket”. I can keep adding to my Stress Bucket when there is room, but if I let it overflow, things get messy.
How big a person’s Stress Bucket is and what fills it up is different for everyone. What the mess looks like when it overflows is different too. The mess could be irritability, depression, anxiety, pain, etc.
If you want to add more activity to your life, it’s important to figure out how full your Stress Bucket is. Because, if you add more to your bucket than you can currently handle, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
So, let’s take a moment and figure out your baseline stress level and what fills your bucket.
First try this brief online stress test.
Write down the things you spend time working on or thinking about.
Group those items into “Good” and “Bad” Stresses.
With this information in front of you, it becomes much easier to see how full your bucket is currently and what is filling it up. You also have some insight into how you might lower it.
Based upon your results, here are your next steps:
If you are in the green, you’ve got more room in your Stress Bucket to challenge yourself. You can add a fair amount of a new activity to your plate. As long as you can find the time.
If you are in the yellow, your Stress Bucket is nearly full. You can add a small amount of a new activity, but should also balance it with a “Good” Stress too.
If you are in the red, your Stress Bucket is full or overflowing. It would be best to take some steps to lower your stress before trying to add a new activity.
There’s one more exciting part! As you start to make changes, you can test how things are going in real-time. You won’t waste time going too slowly or wait until you burn out to know you overdid it.
There is a Brain-Based tool called Assess & Reassess that I use with all my clients that will help guide you in the moment.
In summary, take some time this week to understand your own “Stress Bucket”. Plan what you want to do to increase your activity levels and share it with me. Lastly, check out the Assess & Reassess video so you can start taking action on your plan.