BEFRIENDING STRESS As a Path Home to Ourselves WEEK 6/6 - Choosing the CONSCIOUS CURRICULUM
May 03, 2026
Welcome to Week 6!
A 6 Week Series on BEFRIENDING STRESS As a Path Home to Ourselves.
Throughout this 6 week Series I am inviting you to step off the comparison track and choose to enter onto your own path of the Conscious Curriculum, in service of your own healing and growth.
We will be focusing on more deeply UNDERSTANDING your unique STRESS RESPONSE as a way of moving towards greater Stress Resilience & Self Leadership in the areas of your life that are most stubborn.
We are going to explore different ways you can meet, tend to, and befriend how STRESS (or the sympathetic Fear Response) is the most common block to you actually slowing down, and acting into a place of inner alignment and personal power towards your most meaningful and value aligned goals.
In Week 1 we explored some of the most common blocks and how comparison can get us stuck before we even allow ourselves to start to listen, and learn from our stress response.
We also learned WHY stress is prevalent topic to draw our attention to in modern day life, across cultures and varying demographics.
In Week 2, we learned about stress on a fundamental level and how it functions in Physics, Mechanics, and Engineering. Including the impacts of excess stress, wear and tear, and breakdown.
In Week 3, we explored Stress in the Human Body. A two part exploration into the History of Stress Research, and how Stress shows up in the Human Body. Meeting the Stress Response both in it's balanced state, and in Pt. 2, the impacts on our bodies when stress becomes Chronic.
Week 4, we dove into how Stress can be influenced by our thinking mind, learned beliefs, and unique perceptions, and perspectives of situations. We also touched on how childhood pains can distort our mental maps of how we see the world.
Week 5, we got introduced to the ways Stress shows up in Human behaviour, most commonly as protective strategies in times of emotional discomfort, conflict and Relationships. We explored the 4 F's of Fear Response Wheel, as well as the Relational Dynamics Map.
If you want to revisit any of the prior series blogs, find the link to the beginning of the series HERE.
6 Week BEFRIENDING STRESS as a Path Home to Ourselves OVERVIEW:
Week 1 |
WHY CARE ABOUT STRESS?
Week 2 |
WHAT EXACTLY IS STRESS?
Week 3 |
WHAT IS STRESS IN THE MINDBODY NERVOUS SYSTEM?
FOUNDING EXPERTS OF STRESS RESEARCH
WHAT IS HEALTHY ADAPTATION?
Week 4 |
WHAT IS STRESS IN THOUGHTS, THINKING, MIND, & EGO?
Week 5 |
WHAT IS STRESS IN BEHAVIOUR?
Week 6 |
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
CHOOSING THE CONSCIOUS CURRICULUM
8 L's of LIFE LEADERSHIP as A SOMATIC SHADOW WORK TOOLKIT for STRESS RESILIENCE.
TRANSFORMING DISTRESS into manageable and PURPOSE INSPIRED EUSTRESS.
Here we are in the final week 6/6 of the series..
I am going to start this last segment of the series off with a Bold Question..
WHERE ARE YOU LYING TO YOURSELF?
Where is life not working, but you are quietly pointing the finger at external circumstances, a cause out there?
Where is it you suttely know you need to look at, but are choosing to turn a blind eye?
Denial is one of our Ego's greatest escape and avoidance mechanisms.
I am holding a compassionate mirror up to you RIGHT NOW.
YOU ARE THE CO CREATOR TO THE RESULTS IN YOUR LIFE.
Life will respond in direct consistency, and coherence with the energy in which you embody and attract into your life.
Everything is an INSIDE OUT GAME.
We choose our energy state, through which thoughts we choose to place our attention on. We embody a belief structure, story, and identity, from these thoughts. We then act out our best effort strategies from this story.
TO CHANGE on a fundamental level. We need to be honest with WHERE IS OUR LIFE NOT WHERE WE WANT IT TO BE...
WHAT'S THE CONSTANT, the repetitive pattern that keeps showing up?
Are you consistently saying you want one thing, and yet your actions are causing you to do another?
Are you setting Health goals, and late night drive throughs, pull you to eat out more fast food than you'd like?
Do you know you need to move on, heal a past heartbreak, but you keep finding yourself falling into what's comfortable and returning to your Ex?
Are you wanting to improve your confidence in communication with your partner, but finding yourself retracting, shying away, when it comes to difficult conversations?
Are you saying you want to ask for help from your partner, so you don't have to carry the whole financial burden, but a guilt ridden voice says you need to be the sole provider?
Do you crave a deeper emotional connection with your partner, but have skepticism how they will take it and whether they can hold your honest emotions without judgement?
Is it making your relationship feel surface level, transactional, and intertwined with unspoken expectations?
This is THE INNER CONFLICT, two or more parts, holding different agendas, priorities, and core needs (Neither of which are in themselves wrong), sometimes just misaligned with our CURRENT GOALS, VISIONS, ASPIRATIONS, and DREAMS.
Eventually we hit an invisible ceiling.
This ceiling is our subconscious fear, Imbalanced Stress response, and self protective system guarding us from unhealed parts of ourselves.
Often it shows up as our
Unhealthy Beingness (Over adaptive feminine) - That shuts us down, self defeats us into playing small before we can even get started.
Eventually it suffocates us into suppressed anger, resentment, underexpressed emotion, sickness, and disease.
or
Unhealthy Doingness (Over adaptive masculine) - The keeps us running, managing, and working for our worth.
Eventually it drives us into imbalance, burnout and exhaustion.
Both of these well intended, but self sabotaging strategies end up stealing from us one or more of:
The 3 Pillars of Fulfillment
HEALTH
QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS
MEANINGFUL WORK
or
The 5 P’s of Wholehearted Living
Inner Peace | Calmness, grounded peace of Mind
Physical Health | Balance, and Harmony in the Body
Presence | Intimacy, and Emotional depth in connection with our relationships, and to the world around us.
Progress | Choice, Autonomy and Freedom to create Meaningful Change/Growth in our life.
Purpose | Courage to follow our hearts in Living a life true to ourselves. Walking our authentic path.
The more I do parts work with my own system, the more and more I am INSPIRED to also help other people grow the CAPACITY TO HOLD THEIR INNER CONFLICTS from a place of genuine curiosity and compassion. I am a living example of the felt emotional transformational impact. I am experiencing an inner harmony with my parts, and an alignment with my own truth, intuition and self trust, that continually deepens as I practice healing more of my past, and experimenting showing up more fully in the PRESENT.
I feel it in my confidence in owning my needs in my relationships.
I feel it in my increased ability to access courage and grounded confidence to put myself out online and speak from my heart in entrepreneurship.
I feel it through my choices in shifting and pivoting my work from the safe, and stable option, to a HEART LED, and MEANINGFUL path.
I will be the first to tell you TRANSFORMATION, and SUSTAINABLE behaviour change does not happen overnight.
Anyone who tries to sell you it does, is selling a quick fix, false bio hack that is destined for long term let down, or worse re traumatization.
IFS (Internal Family Systems) is an evidence based, proven methodology of working with our Inner world in a safe, compassionate, and curious way that allows us to understand ourselves and our patterns in a way that allows for reintegration, rebalancing, and new possibilities.
When parts feel understood they share how they are trying to help. When parts recognize their efforts are in conflict to other parts agendas, we (our parts) WAKE UP to the conflict.
It's in these AHA moments, intuitive INSIGHTS, that the system shifts, a NEW APPROACH opens up. A new PERSPECTIVE of how to approach our situation, problem, or challenge at hand.
With ongoing practice and integration.. A continued relationship to our parts, starts to build inner trust between the system. An Inner Leader of Loving awareness begins to take back the wheel of driving our ship. Our Truest SELF, becomes the one in charge, and our parts become self LED in their most adaptive and helpful ways.
It's in this harmonious inner dynamic that we are able to LEAD our lives from an open hearted embodied confidence, SELF TRUST, and Surrender.
We notice times we felt we didn't have choice, to a spaciousness where now we do have CHOICE.
We move from Reactive to Personally Responsive and Responsible for the results in our life.
We gradually start speaking for our parts, rather than triggered and acting from our parts.
We shift from Ego Led, to Ego Integrated.
We bring our vices under control, and learn to harness them into our gifts.
We shift from FEAR to making choices from the COURAGE of the HEART.
The CONSCIOUS CURRICULUM is a choice, a gateway to follow your stress patterns towards your own healing and expansion.
It's not going to be easy at first, but I promise it gets easier. The results will keep you Inspired to continue.
I created the ALIGN PROGRAM, a framework of the 8 L’s of Life Leadership, as a model and toolkit I myself am using and referencing in how to live my life from a place of SURRENDER, AND SELF TRUST.
I am teaching people the skills, techniques, and exact practices of how to shift ones energetic STATE, to create a new internal narrative, STORY and IDENTITY, which then informs every STRATEGY, CHOICE, ACTION, BEHAVIOUR and HABIT that when compounded unequivocally moves us towards our most INSPIRED GOALS and DREAMS.
The model is built on the dance of duality. Surrender and Imperfect Expression. Coming into SACRED UNION of our healthy feminine, and healthy masculine energies, in which ever balance feels natural and authentic to YOU.
In doing so we are ALIGNING OURSELVES TO our MOST POWERFUL AND POTENT ENERGY.
The place where we will be able to Lead, Serve, and Share our personal mission, and heartfelt gifts on this planet.
Learn the Toolkit, a take it with you on every Quest, Adventure, and Unique Expressive Creation you feel called to Channel into this world.
The Conscious Curriculum is a path of Self Discovery.. but more importantly a lifelong journey of SELF & SHARED POSSIBILITY!
EXERCISE | Owning Your Imbalances. Naming the CONFLICT. Finding Your Constant.
In this exercise I am inviting you from a place of compassionate curiosity,
to Take a Stress inventory:
We can't Change, what we haven't Named feels Off, and what we haven't OWNED we WANT, DESIRE, and DREAM to be DIFFERENT.
We can't Manage, and Improve what we can't Measure.
In this exercise we are going to look at the major areas of our life, and NAME where we have a GAP, and where WE ENVISION and DESIRE TO INVITE MORE INTO OUR LIFE.
Coaches refer to as the Wheel of Life, or Life Fulfillment Map & Tracker.
When our life is imbalanced, one area is thriving, while another is suffering, it feels bumpy, like a misaligned tire balancing.
Steps:
1. On a scale of 1-10 Rate the Subjective Satisfaction of each Area of your life.
2. Journal an emotionally charged description, or create a inspiration based Vision board for what a 10/10 would look like in each Category/ Arena of life!
3. Write what 2 levels higher than your current level of satisfaction would look like in each category of life.
4. Choose 1 arena of life to focus on. (If we try and take on too much, too fast, we overwhelm ourselves.) Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. We are playing the long game. Remember the conscious curriculum is a path humility, and integrity of self growth. It is only YOU vs YOU.
Choose 1 goal for the next 30 days that would move this arena of your life up 2 levels of Life Fulfillment!
Choose 2 Habits that you can track daily that would support the realization of this goal.
Include them on attached the Habit Tracker Sheet below.
5. Resilience - Follow the 8 L's of Life Leadership in Surrender and Imperfect Expression to PRACTICE this new Habit DAILY.
When in doubt, if you have parts that are getting in the way. Don't hesitate to reach out.
I have realized so much growth, healing, and self empowerment from leaning on the shoulders of experts, having the support of practitioners, and coaches just a few steps ahead of me.
6. When one goal is REALIZED, Return to the MASTER Wheel of Life Fulfillment MAP, Where are you inspired to EXPAND Into?
Congratulations! You made it to the end. You COMPLETED week 6/6 of the Series!
I hope this series offered a new insight into STRESS, STRESS RESILIENCE, and the opportunities to be with our patterns in a new and empowering way.
With practice I trust, through my OWN experience, YOU will be able to relate to your LIFE, your RELATIONSHIPS, and your DREAMS with more Eustress (Inspired Growth/Challenge), rather than feeling held back by blocks of distress.
If you are curious to learn what is possible in deepening your connection with stressed or over protective parts and what they may be struggling with. I welcome and encourage you to Schedule a 1on1 Discovery Call. We can hear from your parts and explore together in what they may be wanting support in.
Wishing you a Compassionate, and New Capacity filled week!
Thoughtfully,
Greg
