A lecture titled ‘Under the Influence of Stress’ was presented by Corey Ciocchetti, a public speaker, author and college professor at the University of Denver on Tuesday at Durham Great Hall in the Memorial Union.
Ciocchetti talked about how to reduce stress and started by explaining the medical definition of stress.
“Stress is a response by your body to an outside stimulus,” Ciocchetti said. “So something happens to you, such as fear or pain, that disturbs or interferes with the normal physiological equilibrium of an organism.”
Ciocchetti said his wife explained that your brain is there to protect you.
“She goes, ‘okay, so when you’re stressed, your brain knows that you’re stressed, and it knows that it’s bad, and it tries to protect you and tells you to stop,” Ciocchetti said. “But your body is sort of disconnected from your brain when it comes to stress, and every single time something stressful happens, your body thinks you’re scared or hurt, and so it tries to protect you.’”
Ciocchetti continues the lecture with a 20-question stress quiz, including questions about eating habits, memory, sleeping habits and unrealistic goals.
He had the audience rank how many of the 20 questions they related to and showed the stress rankings to match.
Ciocchetti defined major stressors and minor stressors.
“On one side you’re going to have your minor stressors, things that are stressing you out and probably shouldn’t, if you were more clear headed about it,” Ciocchetti said. “And on this side are your major stressors, things that stress you out and should but you don’t have time to think about because of all these things over here.”
Furthermore, Ciocchetti said to always put your family before work even though the world is going to tell you the opposite.
“You’re going to be tempted to do that,” Ciocchetti said. “The world’s going to tell you to do that, but don’t do that. Why? Because your heart doesn’t want that. No one’s heart wants that. I get it that it’s the American dream, and I love that part of this country. Like when I was a kid, my dad was in jail, like this is the only country in the world where my dad can be in jail and I can become a law professor. I love the American dream, but not more than my family.”
Following the stress ranking quiz, he gave 20 tips to reduce stress.
One of the tips he gave included walking.
“This campus is beautiful,” Ciocchetti said. “This is the first time I’ve been here. I’m so glad I got to drive in while it was still light. This is lovely. Did a lot of you come here because of how beautiful it was? What was the last time you walked around campus and looked at the buildings and the views? It just takes five minutes to watch the sunset, and at some point in your heart when you chose to come here, that was part of it, right? But we got too busy. We don’t do that anymore.”
Another tip he gave was to laugh at your self and to not take yourself too seriously.
“Laugh at yourself,” Ciocchetti said. “You know, the average person farts 14 times a day. That’s you. I love that these seats are far away. That kind of helps, right?”
He said every person should get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night and if your mind is racing, read and do not use your phone before bed.
“I want to go to bed at 11 tonight, which means I’m going to be in bed at 10:30 with this book and your phone. The best thing I ever did for my stress level is take my phone charger and put it in my closet because I’m too lazy to walk in there,” Ciocchetti said.
He also mentioned that he doesn’t believe everything happens for a reason but he does believe everything has a silver lining.
“What have been the silver linings to some of the tough things that happen in your life?” Ciocchetti said. “Because you can focus your mind on the silver linings. Your stress level will go down, or I’ll say this to you, please never say this is just a season of my life.”
The last thing he mentioned was to call someone and tell them you love them.
“Just trust me on this, we make a commitment to be that if you have good parents this room. You’ll text them tonight after this is done, and tell them you love them,” Ciocchetti said.
To watch the lecture and to learn more you can visit this website.
