6 Hidden Sources of Stress and How to Fix Them with Amber Curtis

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I'm an intuitive guide and the owner of Change Radically.

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Now, on to today's episode:

Corinne Powell: Amber Curtis, PhD, is a productivity coach who helps overwhelmed moms make more time for who and what they love.

A professor by day, business owner by night, and devoted mom of four busy boys throughout,

Amber knows all too well how challenging it is to juggle all the things.

After getting suicidal from the stress of keeping up with her demanding job while raising young kids, she applied her academic research skills to figure out what's scientifically shown to help you better balance it all.

She shares all her insights in hopes that other moms never feel as hopeless as she once did. And so, very happy to have you.

Looking forward to just hearing you share how we can benefit from all of the research

and work you have done and how you can uncover for us some hidden sources of stress so that we can tackle them.

Amber Curtis: Thank you so much for having me.

I am really thrilled to be here.

And as you mentioned, I just love sharing the things that I have learned both the hard way through many years of experience and then through my academic research.

Corinne Powell: Yeah.

So, what are some of the hidden sources of stress?

The main ones that you feel like we as a society are struggling with?

Amber Curtis: I primarily focus on busy moms or women that have tended to be very high achievers, high performers in the past.

And typically, at some point, usually if we have children or just something in our life changes, we are no longer able to perform at the level we previously did.

And so, more and more, I have found and work with clients on ways that our use of time and how we think about time is contributing to this chronic stress that so many of us struggle with.

So, I focus particularly on sources of stress related to time, time management, although

I don't love the term time management, right?

Because I think from a mindset perspective, that keeps us focused on the perceived lack of time.

We can get more into that if you want.

But again, there are many sources of stress.

The ones I'm going to focus on today are specifically time-related.

And the great news from that is that then we can actually do something about it.

There are ways to fix these sources of stress.

Won't happen overnight, but even just becoming aware of them and catching yourself in perhaps some of these actions or mentalities will give you just a much better handle on your time and how you're using it.

So, the first and primary source of stress that I think goes very unnoticed is decision fatigue or indecision.

We are all bombarded by constant messages, constant information, constant demands, and we don't even realize what a toll that takes on us mentally.

Many women are very familiar with the idea of invisible load and the mental load that we might carry, but every little decision from when we're going to do things or what we need to wear or what our kids need to wear or bring to school or what's coming up at different times, it all just adds up.

And the more decisions that we make, the more we spend our mental energy and our cognitive power, and then we aren't using that for the areas of our life that we truly believe matter most.

And on the indecision front, many of us are so afraid of making the wrong decision that we feel like we need more information.

We need to do some research.

We need to ask trusted loved ones to get their opinions, and we postpone action until we feel like we will get it right.

And then we waste our time and our energy on these things that we could actually try and automate or delegate or just come up with routines and simple systems to make it easier on ourselves.

Corinne Powell: Yes.

Okay.

And so the automation, the routines, the simple systems, is that what you also focus on with your clients?

Amber Curtis: It is.

It's one of many things that I love helping my clients with.

We really work to clarify your ideal life and your deep down core priorities because so many of us have or espouse what we believe and what we want our lives to look like.

And the hard reality is that so often our use of time doesn't reflect those priorities.

And that's not to shame anyone. I have struggled with this and continue to struggle with it.

But I think, again, that becoming aware of any gap between what you say is most important and how you are spending your time is really enlightening.

So I always recommend that people are just working to, again, minimize the number of choices they have to make and make sure that they have a set standard for answers to questions or opportunities that do or don't align with their priorities.

So, for instance, a new opportunity comes up to attend an event or to help out at your child's school or to volunteer or to attend a really cool meeting or get together.

Whatever it is, you should know, does this fit in with my priorities?

Is this truly going to help me be the mom I want to be or the wife and the person I want to be?

Again, whatever your priorities are, how is taking on this new commitment or even an opportunity, a really fun thing we want to do, how is that going to take away from the time and energy we have for the things we say matter most?

Because as many of us have realized the hard way, every decision, every yes automatically means no to something else.

Corinne Powell: Yeah.

What about when it does feel like that particular thing aligns, but there's also a lot of other things going on that also align with the direction you're going, what do you do then?

Amber Curtis: That's a great question.

That's where I really work to help women differentiate between capability and capacity, which we might actually get to momentarily in response to another hidden source of stress. 

If I might move on and if that's okay with you, the second big source of stress, hidden source of stress is procrastination.

This is so natural.

We all have so much on our plate and then tend to put off even the important things because so much else is going on, but we don't realize how much stress that causes us until it comes down to the wire or heaven forbid, we've missed the deadline and everyone knows the feeling, the physical feeling in your body of the cortisol stress hormone and the adrenaline running and trying to get this done and beat the timer or worse, again, missing the deadline or letting something fall through the cracks and then you feel like a failure because you just didn't do what you said you were going to do. 

Oftentimes, this happens for very unexpected reasons. You have every intention of doing whatever it is and then life throws its curveballs at you and you don't have the time you thought you were going to have, but to the extent that we can control our procrastination, it's really important to step back and realize that so often the reason we procrastinate is out of fear.

We are afraid that by doing what we need to do, the thing we're procrastinating on, we will be missing out on some other opportunity and sometimes we're afraid subconsciously of the effects of the success that could be associated with completing whatever it is we're procrastinating on.

Big example is that if you have some idea, some goal you want to reach, like you want to start a business and that's a very big thing that I'm just going to use as an example here, but we so often procrastinate on taking steps to actually get that out into the world because we're afraid not just of how much work it's going to be or that maybe people won't like it or won't buy what we're offering, but subconsciously a lot of us have fear around success.

What will this thing mean for my life if it goes well and once it's out there?

So anyway, any little thing we procrastinate on and the solution for this is hopefully going to sound very counterintuitive.

I always push my clients to lean into procrastination and I know that that can sound really strange that if the problem, the thing causing you stress is your procrastination, why would you lean into it?

But if you have or haven't heard, procrastinating on purpose is incredibly powerful because it forces you to think about how much time and energy you can afford to spend on whatever it is that you need to do, right?

How much time and energy will you allow this thing to take? Because as Parkinson's law tells us, a task expands to fit the time that you give it.

Meaning if you don't set a limit or don't have a deadline, even a self-imposed one, it will take as much as you allow and then you will miss out on other things and you will kind of drag your feet and take longer than you need to to get the thing done and that just spills over into much more stress.

So what we want to do is make sure that we are procrastinating on purpose by deciding how much time the thing is going to take and then purposely waiting until a window around the deadline to get that thing done in the time limit we have set.

That way, up to that point, you are mentally free to do whatever else you need or want to do and you don't need to worry because you know that that task is safely scheduled down the road and then you just need to sit down.

You can take advantage of that stress hormone, the cortisol and adrenaline that build up as the deadline is approaching to be more focused.

It is shown that those stress hormones do enable you to focus a lot more.

For many people, I mean, there is the fight, flight, or freeze, different categories here, but for most people, the stress of needing to get something done and reach that deadline will help you get more clear and be able to just bang it out in much less time than you would expect.

Another thing that's really important is just to make sure and think through the person you want to be here, right?

That you are someone who is making good choices around the use of your time and working to improve your delayed gratification, which is so unnatural, right?

It is so hard for us to say no to the fun opportunities that come up or the momentary activities that give us pleasure and feed into the reward circuitry in our brains.

But if we know that we can work hard, get something done, and then see the long-term benefit, it will change for us over time and we will be more successful.

The third source of stress is procrastination, but it's actually a really good thing when done right.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, I love that idea that whatever time you give it, it'll fill.

Like, if you plan to be able to have an hour and a half on whatever task it is, then knowing that allows you to fit it into that time frame differently. That feels very freeing.

Amber Curtis: It does.

And it even goes with household tasks. I have some things stacked on my dresser that I have needed to put away forever, right?

And I'm procrastinating on that. And every time I walk by, I feel a little bit stressed because I know that I said I was going to put those things away, and it hasn't happened for a couple of months now.

But the reality is I have not given that task a deadline, and it's not going to take very long.

But I need to schedule it in, and I need to just sit down and do it and, again, give myself that timer so that I am racing against the clock, bang it out, and it's done.

Corinne Powell: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's great.

Okay. So procrastination was number three.

Amber Curtis: That was number two. Yes. Number three.

Okay. The third hidden source of stress is when things do take longer than expected.

So you work very hard to try and estimate how much time something is going to take.

Unfortunately, this takes a lot of practice because most of us vastly underestimate how long something will take to complete. 

And then we get really stressed when things need more time than we have.

One of the root causes of this that I have surely experienced, I know not all people are this way, but the root cause of much of this stress is procrastination, excuse me, perfectionism and really wanting everything to be perfect.

So you just are afraid to finish and fully be done. And then it takes more time than you have.

So the biggest solution here is to under-plan, meaning that you really need to give yourself lots of blank space in your plans, really make sure that you're not over-scheduling yourself, and that you are anticipating unexpected things coming up.

You don't know what that might be. You don't know when a child might get sent home sick from school or the weather might cause issues or traffic will cause you to be late to something.

But the more that you can just give yourself wiggle room in your plans, the better. And then in regards to the perfectionism, easier said than done, for sure.

But a solution here is to try and lower your standards a little bit and just work to genuinely believe that good is good enough. Things don't have to be perfect.

The hard reality is that pretty much no one cares about things as much as we do. And we're only stressing ourselves out.

Hardly anyone is going to notice the big difference between something that you have done good versus what they might do.

And I've heard it said that if you're used to giving 150 or 200% to everything you do, 100% is still going to be more than what most people put in.

That's lowering your standards, but it's much higher than most people would have done. And then this is where capability versus capacity does come into play.

As we were talking earlier, when things take longer than you expect and that repeatedly happens over and over, we have to remember that different seasons of life come with different demands and different abilities not to do the task. Most women are undoubtedly capable of anything they set their mind to.

And that's the key, right? Just determined, being determined to do something and allowing yourself the time and the freedom to go after the goals on your heart.

But on the other flip side, what I see women struggling with is fighting their reality. They have these grand ambitions and they want to do all of the things. Again, I'm the classic example here. 

We want to do all of the things. It's not that we are physically unable to do them. If given the time and space, we totally could. But our capacity is out of alignment with our expectations.

We only have so much time in and around our other responsibilities. And it's easy to get frustrated and stressed and feel stuck in that situation.

It's really easy to get bitter and resentful when your capacity differs from your capabilities. And for many of us, high achieving, high performing women, again, this is where we really start to have trouble.

And the way to overcome that is to increasingly accept where you are and recognize it's not going to last forever.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, good points.

I'm thinking from the angle of where I come from, even that idea, that perfectionistic idea, sometimes there's a voice in our head, right?

There might have been a parental figure, somebody that we remember where it did feel like it mattered how well we performed.

Because I agree with what you're saying. We probably care more than anyone else.

But then a part of me knows if the echo of our past is showing up, then we might have that idea that, but there is somebody who cares.

Amber Curtis: Absolutely.

Corinne Powell: Is that a present reality or is that something that actually was experienced in the past and we don't need to base our decisions on it right now?

Amber Curtis: That's such a good point.

And this is where I am so excited about the work that you do to help women uncover any trauma they might have been through.

Even if it's not blatantly traumatic, you're right.

There are so many early childhood experiences and the ways that we are socialized to believe that we need to have something to show for ourselves and that we have to earn approval or love or acceptance.

And that has genuinely contributed to, I know, my perfectionism. And we don't even realize it. So you're right.

I'm offering some simple solutions, but there would be tremendous benefit in pulling back the curtain and trying to examine where your perfectionist tendencies come from.

And then ask yourself if they are still really necessary.

Like you're saying, that little child that might be seeking her parents' approval, is that even still a thing?

Or can we accept that the little child felt this was necessary, but the grown woman knows that she is perfectly worthy and wonderful exactly as she is.

Corinne Powell: Right.

And when you look at it, like saying, instead of giving 150%, give 100%, then it really levels the playing field like, oh yeah, because even 100% is you're all in.

Amber Curtis: Oh yes. And I'm so sorry, I need to track down the source of this quote.

It is not my own, but something to the effect of on the days where you only have 40% to give and you give that 40%, you gave 100%.

And wow, that still just gives me goosebumps. It resonates with me so strongly because we are not able to perform at the same level, even every single day.

And I'm going to get more into that in a moment, but recognizing how your capability does differ on a daily, weekly, monthly basis naturally in response to these biological rhythms our bodies go through.

Oh my goodness. I get so excited talking about all of that.

Corinne Powell: Yeah. Well, it's empowering because it's very legitimate. Yes. And go ahead.

Amber Curtis: Yeah.

I  was just going to say so many of us don't realize that all of these forces are at play and how they work together and what a transformative difference it has when you become aware of them and start working with your circumstances, your natural body rhythms, your new mindset, et cetera.

Corinne Powell: Yeah. Yeah. So jump into it. Tell us what you're so excited about.

Amber Curtis: Well, so we're going to get into that in a second.

But first, the fourth hidden source of stress is inefficiency, not getting as much done as you thought you would, which is different than things taking longer than expected.

It's that you had the time and yet you somehow didn't get done what you thought you were going to do in that time.

The root causes are often attempting to do too much at once, being distracted, not focusing enough on the task at hand, and then diverting your attention to the point that you are just not giving your full focused energy as you should.

So easier said than done again.

But the solution is to really eliminate distractions, focus on one thing at a time, and try and put on those blinders so that you can be efficient and do what you need to do.

Move on. The fifth hidden source of stress is ineffectiveness, where you were trying to be productive.

You were focused, but you still feel like you don't have much to show for it.

And here is where we get into what I call your peak performance windows.

I have spent many years researching your body's four natural energy rhythms, which for anyone who doesn't know, are your circadian rhythm, your 24-hour, roughly 24-hour biological cycle of when you sleep and eat and how those hormones are all at play in your body.

So the circadian rhythm is number one. The second is your ultradian rhythm, which is typically anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes in most people.

But it is a recurring pattern that your body goes through multiple times a day, and it affects how long you can focus for any one period of time before you naturally need a break and you need to get up and move around or switch focus to something else before you start burning out and seeing diminishing returns.

The third natural rhythm is the infradian rhythm, which for most women, we're very familiar.

This is our monthly cycle, and there are all kinds of wonderful, enlightening facts we now know about the four phases of a woman's menstrual cycle and how capable we are at completing certain types of tasks within those different phases.

And then fifth, or excuse me, fourth, the fourth natural rhythm is what I call your weekly cycle, and that differs for every person based on what all they have going on.

But just in general, a lot of research shows that, say, Monday and Friday are basically down the drain for most people.

They don't get good focused work done as they are jumping back in from the weekend or looking to duck out and be done with the work week.

So I just love researching how we can work with these natural energy rhythms.

And what is so profound is that they are unique for every single person, but you can track them over time.

And then the more you know how your body works, you can identify the windows of time in which you will or can expect to have the most amount of physical, mental, emotional energy.

And that's then where you can plan in your most important cognitively intense tasks. It's so game-changing.

Corinne Powell: Oh, man, I feel like that should be a podcast episode in and of itself.

Like, I can tell there's a lot there.

Yes, that's great.

Amber Curtis: We're barely scratching the surface for sure.

But again, I love to talk about that.

And I've seen a lot of my clients have major, major success with starting to track that.

But so solution to ineffectiveness is knowing your body's natural rhythms and then striving to do the right things at the right times by purposely planning in what you tackle or avoid in those different windows.

Corinne Powell: That's good.

So it's so important to be connected with ourself, with our body, what you're talking about here, to have the expectations that are reasonable, to give ourselves hope by saying,

OK, so this task you don't want to do, we're just going to give ourselves this window of time to do it in, it makes it more, we can look at it.

I feel like we can look at it and see it then.

Instead of it's this enormous, I don't want to do this, it's going to be so hard.

OK, so what are we going to give ourselves to focus on so that we don't need to sit there in that overwhelm?

We can say, I'm going to spend only this amount of time on it.

Like, I just hear what you're saying is it gives us a way through what could be otherwise just stopping us in our tracks.

Amber Curtis: Yes, you hit the nail on the head because whether you actively implement the solutions I have mentioned or not, the bottom line is just that awareness is so key.

Because once you know, say, your different body rhythms, and you are aware that this is a natural time where you are not going to have much energy, but you still have a lot to do or you still have those high expectations for yourself, that's when you need to give yourself all the more grace and say, look, this is the best I have right now.

It's not my best in absolute terms, but either I'm going to wait and do this at a time where I know I can perform better, or I'm just going to accept that this is taking a lot out of me and that's OK.

That's normal. That is to be expected. It really brings your expectations back in line with reality.

Corinne Powell: Yeah. Yeah. And that word you said, good enough before, that good enough is what it is. So it's good.

Amber Curtis: All right.

The sixth hidden source of stress is going to sound a little simplistic because many of us use this word to describe stress itself, but that is overwhelmed.

And we get so stressed when we have more to do than time to do it.

We feel so stuck and we point the finger and we want to blame everything else for how crazy and overwhelmed we feel.

The root cause of this, as you must be very well aware from your research and your work with clients and life experience, is that constant need to seek approval from other people, right?

That we're looking for some sort of validation that what we are doing matters and we're looking externally for that.

So we have taken on more than we can realistically do, or we are committed to things that don't actually align with our values.

They don't bring us joy, but we said we would do them because we think it's the right thing to do.

We think it's going to make someone else happy, or we were afraid to say no in the moment and make someone upset.

Another dimension of overwhelm can just be more benignly not knowing where to start. You have so much that all looks equally important on paper.

And so one of the very practical ways that I love helping my clients is to implement what I call the five D's formula.

This is the prioritization framework I have come up with to help us all look at our miles long to-do list and better identify what is actually most important.

So I lead my clients through a series of questions to better determine which tasks they can drop, what they can defer, what they can delegate, what they can dumb down and not need to do to their 150%, right?

What can they just get 50% at and hurry up and be done? And then what must they absolutely do well?

So I have all of this in several resources, but I would love to provide my free Pinpoint Your Priorities playbook to your listeners if we can include that link in the description, or I can also, it's on my website, solutionsforsimplicity.com.

But I find that one of the best ways to help overcome overwhelm is to really clarify which tasks are your priorities and work on getting comfortable with saying no, because it's that people-pleasing tendency that tends to get us into trouble.

We've overcommitted and we resent that. We need to admit to ourselves that we took on more than we want to do, whether we can do it or not.

We don't want to do it. So best not to take it on in the first place.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, good. Yeah, I'll definitely include that in the show notes.

Amber Curtis: Thank you. So those are the six hidden sources of stress that I, you know, am really passionate about sharing.

I'm so glad to put them out here. And if anyone has any questions, they can always reach out to me. But you tell me now, how else can I, how else can I share all these things I've learned the hard way?

Corinne Powell: Yes.

Well, I think anyone listening, if they're hearing something that they say, this is what I need, it's very obvious that you are going to be able to help them and I, I love the, the vast, there's so much, like you said, we just like touch the surface and…

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I'm interrupting the episode just for a moment to let you know that I have some newly revised and fresh workbooks for you.

They'll focus on healing your inner child, living intuitively. What are the keys for change? How can you stop people pleasing?

If you've heard me talk about a subject here on the podcast, I likely have a workbook that also talks about that subject in more depth.

So go and take a look. changeradically.com/shop. It's all on sale right now, 50% off. So go ahead and check it out today. changeradically.com/shop.

I don't know if anything practical you want to tell my listeners about where they can find you and how they can connect with you.

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Amber Curtis: Thank you. I would love to connect. I am at solutionsforsimplicity.com. Bunch of resources there. I also have a YouTube channel, just on YouTube, Solutions for Simplicity. Same on Instagram, at solutionsforsimplicity. Thank you so much for allowing me to share all of this with your listeners.

Corinne Powell: Oh, yeah. I'm happy you've been here. And I know that there's, like, I always encourage my listeners pulling one thing that they can take and start to practice.

And you have given us several options of what that one thing could be. And I feel like you've even touched on things that we may need to look into more deeply for ourself.

But there's just so much here. And I really appreciate your time and you sharing with us.

And I am grateful for the work you do because, gosh, you're allowing your life, experiences, your story to help others to create such impactful change.

I can feel the power in it. But sometimes that comes from what we've had to walk through and out of. And then as we share that with everyone else, there is more that they receive because you're not just talking something that you learned in your head.

Like, you know this in the deepest parts of who you are. 

Amber Curtis: Oh, thank you for saying that.

Yes, we did just, I threw so much out here and we barely scratched the surface.

You are so right that any one of these sources of stress or the dimensions underneath them, we could talk at length.

But thank you for bringing up the fact that the reason I'm so passionate about this is because I actually ended up suicidal in the early years of my motherhood journey because I didn't see so much of this coming.

And I did come into motherhood with, I didn't even realize it, but perfectionism, people-pleasing, so many kinds of traits that had served me really well to that point and then completely caused me to lose myself trying to do it all and being unable to do so when I had my first son.

So thankfully, of course, it really all worked out.

And I'm so grateful because it has given me this passion and this perspective I wouldn't otherwise have. But thank you.

Corinne Powell: Yeah. Well, and you're shedding light onto something that's actually very real. Not everybody's going to talk about it, but there are a lot of us who understand what you just said. We've touched in with it.

And that's why it's even more impactful to hear somebody say, I was there and here I am 10 years later, and it can get better and it can get a lot better because we need to know that when we're in the thick of motherhood, in the thick of life, depending on the circumstances.

I know what you're saying is relating to listeners that are not moms as well, because what you're talking about is practical across the board.

Amber Curtis: Yes, you're so right. If I could leave people with one takeaway, I want everyone to know that you are not what you do.

Your productivity has no bearing on your inherent self-worth and value. And I just wish someone had told me that and drilled that into me from day one.

But especially when I was really struggling because I wasn't even aware how much I thought I had to earn my worth. And I don't know.

There's just so much wrapped up in here, but I sure hope that people want to be productive, not because it, again, determines your value, but because we have this beautiful gift of time. 

We have this one life to live and we can make the most of it.

But we let our stress, we let our struggle limit us and take our time, our energy. I don't want that for us. I want us to be happy and fulfilled.

Corinne Powell: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, thank you again, Amber.

Amber Curtis: Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Corinne Powell: Well, we've come to the end of another episode.

If you enjoyed the conversation that Amber and I had, I wanna highlight a few of the previous episodes that I’ve recorded that you may also find helpful that will expound on some of the content you heard today: from season 2 episode 39 - Intuition is Gold; from season 3 episode 23 - Take care of Yourself and from season 2 episode 21 - Normalize Making Mistakes.

Here we are, we’ve come to the end of another episode. Sit back and reflect on what you heard. What’s the one thing that resonates with you that you can take away and do something with? Let’s not just listen, let’s listen and take action. Now action may look very different for us, but it’s doing something with what we hear. I hope that you will share today’s episode with a friend who you think will also enjoy it and please come back next week.

I hope that you have a fabulous week and that you remember when you pillow your head at night when you are going through your days that who you are is good and I am glad that you're alive.