It’s Not the Stress — It’s the Nervous System
When your body doesn’t feel safe, it will trade your dreams for control.
I was at the lounge at Guarulhos airport waiting for my flight to Cusco last week, drinking a 2 a.m. coffee and observing what was happening around me.
They had an issue on the floor right in front of where people serve their food. They had to put those lines and signs to protect the area so people wouldn’t step on the recently fixed flooring.
I can’t tell exactly what happened, but someone, I think an employee, dropped something, and it messed up the whole thing.
There were four men around that mess: one guy cleaning the floor when two well-dressed men approached the scene.
One of them was mad.
Oh boy, he was upset. He was walking fast, and I could almost hear his steps.
He wasn’t facing my direction, but from far away I could hear his sighs — “Oh my God, guys, this is unacceptable…”
He turned his back, brutally hit the employee door right beside the buffet, and entered another room. He came back nodding his head, like I can’t believe this is happening.
Immediately, he took me back to the times when I worked as a restaurant manager at a resort hotel in Brazil. I was a pile of stress back then. I had a lot of pressure over my shoulders, but we all do, in different ways.
The key is how we deal with it.
Small things would take a lot of space in my mind. I would get upset often, overly worried about things outside my control.
Around that time, I went to the hospital twice in the same year with migraine crises.
Before I quit working at the hotel, I was offered a strategic position by the owner. I had already made plans to move to Canada, but I remember clearly thinking: I don’t want more stress than I currently have. And getting a promotion felt very stressful.
I didn’t have the awareness at the time, but this is a powerful realization: we block success and expansion based on how regulated our nervous system is.
If where I was already felt extremely stressful and painful — and I was super young and had already gone to the hospital twice — what would it be of me with more responsibility?
What I didn’t know then was that the stress I was trying to avoid or protect myself from wasn’t outside of me.
I could probably have had a more “chill” job and still have felt stressed.
This is so profound.
When we realize this for ourselves, we can break the boxes that keep us playing small.
Your mind, your nervous system, is trying to protect you, because for whatever reason, you’ve determined through past experiences and perceptions that life is hard, or that more responsibility equals more stress, or even that more money equals more stress.
Success feels stressful because you don’t want to look like the “successful” people you’ve perceived out there.
But don’t forget, it’s not what’s out there. It’s your perception.
The thing that causes stress in you is not stressful in itself; it’s how you deal with it.
So you don’t need to play small or dream small to avoid stress. If your nervous system is dysregulated, even a small business and what you perceive as a “simple life” will still feel stressful.
This tendency, to control things, to believe that life needs to go a certain way for you to relax, that a simpler life with fewer desires will finally bring peace, is an illusion.
The peace you want to feel is only available now, and it does not depend on your circumstances, even if they seem stressful in your opinion.
When your body doesn’t feel safe, it doesn’t dream, it defends.
That’s why we overthink, hesitate, or shrink opportunities that could actually expand us. Playing small is just the nervous system’s way of saying, “I don’t feel safe enough to hold more yet.”
As Michael Singer writes in The Surrender Experiment:
“Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.”
That line says it all. The stress isn’t coming from life, it’s coming from our resistance to life.
Don’t let your dysregulated nervous system block you from creating your Sacred Business, sharing authentically, and making the impact you know you are capable of.
The more regulated you become, the more capacity you have to hold the beauty, responsibility, and growth that your dreams are asking for.
That’s how creation becomes sacred, not because it’s effortless, but because your system can stay open through it
Remember how to breathe.
Your breath is the gateway to connection with life.
It can separate, signaling that everything is a threat, or it can unify, reminding you that everything is an opportunity.
With Love,
Carolina
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