Welcome to Episode #229 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast.
In this episode, you’ll understand exactly how to reduce stress using three powerful, practical skills that anyone—especially high-achievers and leaders—can begin implementing today.

My Lifelong Journey to Reduce Stress

I’ve been on a journey to reduce stress for what feels like my entire life.

In high school, I was studying late at night while balancing field hockey, lacrosse, clarinet, and student council. I remember asking my mom after dinner one night, “Does it get easier?” She looked at me and said, “No, it doesn’t.”

That moment planted a seed in me—and maybe you’re reading this today because you’ve asked yourself the same question.

Why Stress Management Matters—Especially for High Achievers

When we don’t feel like we’re in control, stress becomes the body’s way of coping. I knew I couldn’t control my school workload or my own desire to do all the things—but I wanted to know how to manage the pressure.

As an executive coach working with corporate leaders, I see this every day. Managing stress isn’t just a “nice to have”—it’s the foundation of being able to lead, perform, and live well. Most of the requests I get around managing time, energy, and team dynamics come back to this: how to reduce stress before it becomes burnout.

The Impact of Chronic Stress on Our Lives

Stress is a normal part of life. But chronic stress—when your body stays in fight-or-flight for extended periods—can lead to burnout, immune issues, and strained relationships.

You may become more irritable, tired, or disengaged. You don’t want to be short with your loved ones or your team—but when your energy is low, it’s hard not to default to survival mode.

Unchecked chronic stress eventually spills over into how we lead, parent, and live. And the longer we avoid dealing with it, the more it becomes embedded in our nervous system.

3 Skills That Help You Reduce Stress Fast

Here are three skills I teach inside my coaching programs that have helped both my clients and myself manage stress more effectively—without needing to eliminate ambition or responsibilities.

1. Choosing Powerfully

One of the most transformative mindset shifts for stress management is reminding yourself:
“I am choosing this.”

Stress often comes from resistance—resisting the situation, the people, or what has already happened. When you take ownership of your choices, even the hard ones, you regain agency.

This doesn’t mean giving up. It means saying:
“Yes, this is happening… and here’s how I choose to respond.”

If you can change something, why worry?
If you can’t, why worry?

This principle, drawn from stoic and spiritual traditions, helps you stay grounded—even when life is chaotic.

2. Disaggregation

Overwhelm is one of the top causes of stress. When everything feels too big to manage, break it down.

Ask yourself:

• What’s the very first step I can take?
  
• How can I make this feel smaller and more doable?
  

Disaggregation is the act of simplifying. By breaking tasks down into their smallest parts, you shift from panic to clarity. You create a path forward, one step at a time.

The result? You feel more in control—and less reactive.

3. Learning Agility

When we feel incapable or unprepared, stress skyrockets. But when we focus on growth, skill-building, and learning agility, we reduce stress through confidence.

As your skills increase, your anxiety decreases.

Instead of saying, “I can’t do this,” you begin to think, “What do I need to learn to figure this out?”

This mindset shift moves you from helplessness to curiosity. It helps you see problems as puzzles—not personal failures.

How to Start Using These Stress Management Tools Today

Here’s a simple way to apply these tools now:

1. Ask yourself: Why am I choosing short-term stress over the long-term pain of avoiding it?
   
2. Break it down: What’s the very next step I can take?
   
3. Learn: What do I need to understand to handle this more effectively?
   

These three tools—Choosing Powerfully, Disaggregation, and Learning Agility—will increase your emotional resilience, help you manage overwhelm, and reduce the stress that keeps showing up in your life.

What If Life’s Challenges Didn’t Have to Feel So Hard?

What if you were able to ride the waves of life instead of being knocked down by them?

What if you actually looked forward to the next challenge—not because it’s easy, but because you feel equipped?

That’s what this work makes possible.

In moments of personal crisis, I’ve often thought:
“This is what I trained for.”

And while that didn’t make things magically easier, it reminded me that I have tools. That I am capable. And that I’m not meant to suffer through life’s challenges—I’m meant to grow from them.

Want to Go Deeper into Stress Reduction and Leadership?

If you’re ready to build these skills and more, this is exactly what we work on inside the Spiritual Achiever® Coaching Program. You’ll learn everything from embodiment practices to high-performance strategies—tools that help you lead and live with confidence, clarity, and calm.

Start Here: Free Training

👉 Watch the free training:
STAND OUT AND LEAD – How to use spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom.

Apply for Coaching

Ready to live a life that feels as good as it looks?

📞 Apply now at www.mayempson.com/contact
Risk-free: If you don’t start seeing results in your first month, you’ll get your money back.

Want to know more about what happens when you join?

1. When you join Spiritual Achiever® Coaching you’ll be supported for a full year: Career Revelation Academy: A 5-step career change process (if you have a job you want to stay in, I’ll show you how to love it even more) that can launch you into your next career chapter in 30 days.
2. 2x/month group training and coaching on Spirituality, Achievement, Earth Energy and Harmony. You’ll know how to design your days for breakthroughs, create a personal brand and community, lead yourself and others through change, become more physically and mentally fit, reduce stress and reinvent what’s possible in this next chapter of your life.
3. Discover your Leadership Strengths and Branding Workshop: Increase your awareness of what makes YOU different from others and how to become even better at your genius zone.
4. Your Best Year workshop: Create your one year plan and design this next year, no matter what time of the year it is.
5. Your Next 5 Years one-day virtual retreat: Vision what’s possible 5 years from now and break out of your old routines so you can step into new habits, behaviors and routines.
6. Tickets to all in-person Spiritual Achiever retreats (discounted rates): Highly immersive and intimate gatherings where we spend time in nature, experience energy work, eat and move well – all while making big decisions and committing to what’s next for us.
7. Monthly 1:1 Coaching Sessions: To help you break through obstacles, define your individual path, and to work on both strategy and mindset.