Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening everybody.
It's your girl, Sonya McQueen, with It's Your Life.
What are you doing with it?
I wanna ask you guys a question.
How do you handle stress in your life?
I've spoke about stress before,
and there are some situations I wanna tell you about,
but I'm gonna drag them out a little bit.
But today I'm gonna share with you
about how I was on Ambien.
I was on Ambien because I couldn't sleep,
and I was on Ambien for four days.
I couldn't sleep because of all the situations
and circumstances at the time going on in my life,
and maybe a month and a half of sleeping,
a total of six to eight hours a week.
Also stress weighs on my body differently,
so I could be in the best of shape.
But when stress hits me, my stomach will get bigger,
I will gain weight overnight.
I went from 127 pounds
to 156 in two weeks.
It's just really weird what my body does.
It's like it morphs,
like I swallow a whole person or something, I don't know.
But no matter how much exercise I do,
how few calories I take in a day,
I get bigger and bigger and bigger
when I am under a lot of stress.
I remember taking pictures of my stomach so big
it was touching the steering wheel,
and you're talking about somebody who was running
and working out daily.
But anyway, the doctor eventually put me on Ambien,
and within that four days period, I took the pills.
I did the craziest, most outrageous things
I cannot begin to tell you that I don't recollect.
I fell down the steps, thought it was funny,
scared the heck out of my kids,
doing just doing crazy stuff,
calling people I don't care for, having picked me up.
Those are stories in themselves, the things I did,
but when I seen proof one day of something I did
the day before, I immediately stopped taking the pills,
and thank God I was only on them for a few days.
It was after that I was reading about other people
on Ambien, getting in cars, driving, not remembering,
turning on their oven, baking stuff, putting stuff
that shouldn't be in the oven in the oven,
doing just extra, extra, extra,
and I was just thankful that I got off the pills
as fast as I did because it was true,
I didn't recollect the things I was doing,
but the whole point is I was on the Ambien
because I couldn't sleep.
I was unable to sleep for weeks on end,
but the reason I wasn't able to sleep
was because I was stressed.
I didn't put the two together back then,
but how do you handle stress and how does it affect you?
I remember when I was working at the Department of Health
there was this young lady and her legs would swell so bad
and she couldn't walk and it hurt so much,
but the more I spoke to her, the more I thought
it was stress related and I was talking to her,
telling her how stress affects me,
how it feels like an elephant sitting
on my shoulder sometimes and I do all these pushups
to get rid of the tightness in my shoulders and my neck,
but it doesn't seem to help and I don't like massages,
but how do these deep needing massages
and buying different things and nothing was helping?
Then I remembered the lack of sleep
and the way my stomach would swell
and how big I would get,
but eating a minimum amount of food
and burning four or five times the calories
that I was eating and still getting bigger
and how all that was stressed for me,
but of course she kept going to the emergency room
and to the doctors and so on and so forth
and they're giving her all these medications
and talking surgery and finally I said,
do me a favor and just try this, try this.
So we went for a walk one day, her legs were hurting her.
I just said, let's get down the steps
and then I started speaking God's word to her
because she's very devoted to her faith
and we started talking about her kids
and my kids and laughing and next thing
I knew she was walking normal y'all.
She didn't even think about it.
She wasn't limping, she wasn't crouched over,
she was walking normal.
We're walking through the parking lot
of the Department of Health,
just talking and laughing and walking
and talking and laughing, she's my assistant.
And next thing I pointed out to her,
hey, look at how you're walking and laughing
and we've been walking for 30 minutes
and you haven't complained in the last 20.
And that's when she realized, wow,
so I think you're right, this is stress related.
She had so much stress on her and she'd go home
and there would be stress about certain things
and she would come to work and talk about them
and the people she was talking to
would add more stress to her because they were band jumpers
and they would make her think the worst
of every situation she discussed
and it would make it worse for her.
How does stress sit on you?
Once I learned how stress affects me and my body
and my mind and not being able to sleep
and do certain things, I started releasing it
in different ways.
How do you release the stress in your life?
I knew I had to make changes in my life
and not do things the same because doing the same things
over and over thinking it was going to release the stress
was just insane, right?
Just insane.
But then when I realized this is a stressor for me,
this is a stressor.
At one point I thought I need a psychiatrist
and maybe some people think they need therapy.
There's nothing wrong with therapy.
As a matter of fact, I still think I could benefit
from therapy but right now these podcasts
are therapeutic for me.
These podcasts are therapeutic.
Writing is therapeutic.
I'm not speaking to myself, praying all therapeutic.
Not even when I'm bothered by somebody sitting down
with them discussing it is therapeutic
because sometimes it makes it worse.
I learned who I could sit and talk to
and who I just had to pray it away
or change our relationship because everybody
isn't accepting when you want to come to them
and express how you feel.
It doesn't mean it's right, wrong or indifferent.
It's how you feel and you have all rights
to express how you feel or how somebody makes you feel.
But nothing's worse than trying to tell somebody
how a situation made you feel
and they are very negative about your words.
They are resilient and they reject your feelings.
Imagine somebody cracking jokes and they hurt your feelings
and they're just jokes but they're making jokes
at the expense of you.
And later on, you see your feelings are really, really hurt
and you try to sit down with them
and you try to tell them, hey,
those jokes you were cracking,
they subliminally were about me
and things you know about me and they get mad.
You know what that attitude of anger is?
It's really an attitude of guilt.
But instead of saying, you know what?
I didn't think about it that way.
I apologize that I made you feel that way.
Even if 100% they didn't mean it that way,
they don't acknowledge your feelings.
Instead, what they do is they become defensive
and they tell you, that's your problem
that you feel that way, that you're guilty,
that this, that, that.
And it makes it worse
and you wish you would have never spoken to them about it
because now you're on the outs with them over a joke.
That's reality, you guys.
So you have to know who you can go to
and express yourself and they'll care about your feelings.
Even if, you know, there was one time
I posted something on Facebook.
It's been over a decade
because I closed my Facebook account for years.
And this one I have now, I think I reopened in 2012 or 13
when I moved to Florida maybe.
But it's not my original one.
My original one, I had the maximum amount of followers
that you could have.
And I was getting hundreds on hundreds
of likes and comments because back then, you know,
I was somebody to somebody, not to myself, but to somebody.
And I'll never forget I posted something
and somebody called me.
And this is somebody I considered a friend
and asked me, was there a post about them
and started telling me, first thing I asked
is what makes you think that post is about you?
And they started telling me something about themselves
that I didn't even know.
How was my post about you
and I didn't even know that, you know,
but they really felt like the post was targeting them.
That's guilt.
I had nothing to do with that, but it incents me still.
Even now today, well over a decade later,
I wish I would have said the same thing, you know,
what makes you think that?
And once they told me, you know what,
I apologize you went through that.
I had no idea.
Even though my post isn't about you
or that situation that I didn't know about,
would you like for me to remove it?
Do you think other people will think it's about you?
That's maybe how I should have handled it, but I was mad.
I was mad that you're gonna call me
and think my post is about you.
And one thing I've made clear is I don't post my issues
and I don't post other people's issues.
If I post something and it hits you, that's either guilt
or it's just the way it is.
Everybody has situations every single day.
And when somebody posts about a situation,
maybe you're going through,
doesn't mean that they're posting about you
and your situation, but I could have handled it differently
because I'm offended that you think
I have the time to post about you.
Instead of feeling how that person felt
and understanding where maybe they were coming from,
but still to this day, and we are talking
probably 13 years ago, I remember that conversation
and I feel badly about the way I handled it,
but that was back then.
Now I know better.
Now I know when somebody has an issue
or something's bothering them to listen to them,
even if it wasn't my intent,
or I don't know what they're talking about
or their way off base, still I know to apologize
that they feel that way, not for my actions.
But I'm sorry you feel that way.
You know, man, I would never do something
to make you feel that way up.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
I'm not taking ownership, but I am showing I care.
There's a huge difference because when you become defensive
and mad over somebody trying to express something to you,
it does a couple of things.
Number one, it makes them not wanna come to you
and talk to you anymore.
Now you're gonna wonder, well, why don't you come
and talk to me?
Because you don't handle conversations the right way.
You get defensive and you put up a guard
and it makes me feel bad for trying to talk to you.
Number two, it hurts them even more
than initially they were hurt.
And you really don't wanna do that.
So you know, have an open mind,
understand what stresses people
and what stressors maybe you're causing
or what stressors maybe you're bringing into your own life.
And if you know something's a stressor,
I know when I'm stressed, I don't sleep.
I know when I'm stressed
and I don't sleep for a while, my attitude changes.
I know when I'm stressed
and I don't sleep and my attitude changes,
I say things that I don't really mean the way they come out
or I don't care about your feelings or what you think.
And I'm more sensitive to everything you say and do.
So it all starts with sleep.
I know I need to get sleep.
So I know I need to release anything that's bothering me.
So I've learned to communicate better.
I learned to open my mouth
and who is important enough for me to open my mouth to
and who I need to say, you know what?
It's not even worth my time.
That's just the way they are.
And my words aren't gonna make a difference.
And we'll saw and let it go.
I've learned everything doesn't need to sit on my shoulders.
I've learned that when people come to me with their issues,
I don't have to have an answer.
I can just have an ear.
I can actually just say, you know what, you wanna pray?
Even if they say, no, I'm gonna pray for you.
I'm gonna pray for that situation.
Do you mind if I share it with the prayer group
I'm a part of?
Can I share it with my family conference prayer group?
If they say yes, I do that.
But if they say no, I've learned not to take on
other people's issues because believe it or not,
trying to come up with answers for other people
when you have your own issues is a double stressor.
Been there, done that.
And I have to think about how many times maybe people called me
and especially in the past and just told me their issue
after issue and that's exactly why I stopped led
by motivation over 10 years ago.
Why I stopped my newsletter over 10 years ago.
Why I stopped traveling and speaking
as a motivational list over 10 years ago.
Why I pulled my books off the shelves over 10 years ago.
I wanted nothing to do with any of that.
I didn't want to hear people's issues
because I didn't know how to listen with the closed mouth.
I had to listen with the response
because I wanted to help everybody else.
That was my goal to help everybody else,
not realizing how much stress and pain and anxiety
it was putting on me because I hadn't even helped myself.
I hadn't even gotten through what my book was about.
I hadn't even realized how to get over the pain
of losing a child at my own hands.
But yet and still here I am,
a untrained professional with no paperwork behind me
to say I'm a professional,
trying to give advice to broken people
when I was in torn pieces myself.
I was in so many pieces,
a forensic team couldn't have put me back together.
So how am I gonna help somebody else?
And of course, that leads to what?
For me, no sleep, which means what?
Getting my feelings hurt easily.
Being an extremely emotional person,
stressed, worried, not wanting to talk to people,
keeping my door shut, getting rid of friends on purpose.
But now I know how to handle any kind of stress
that comes my way and I sleep y'all.
And if I don't sleep,
it doesn't have anything to do with stress.
I go through these periods of time where I just can't sleep.
My mind doesn't stop.
I'm thinking about my business.
I'm thinking about fundraising.
How do I begin to fundraise?
Why don't I have more money so I don't have to fundraise?
Do I apply for grants?
I don't have my 501c3 yet.
How do I get money from my business
that's gonna help communities?
In the meantime, my mind doesn't stop, my board.
What do they know?
When am I gonna meet my board?
How do I meet my board?
I don't want them in my house.
Do I take everybody out to eat?
Hey, everything has my mind going.
These are good things to keep my mind going
because then I pray about it and I think about it
and I express it to other business-minded people
or people who care or people who wanna see
this dream come to fruition, right?
And it's all positive.
I get up to pee at midnight, I went to bed at 11,
now I'm wide awake because now I'm thinking about business.
And how wonderfully helpful I'm gonna be
to the homeless population,
get them from the streets into their own homes.
It's a good lack of sleep now.
And then after a couple of nights, if I still can't sleep,
I take a swig of Z-Quel and I'm sleep
for the next two days, I'm good.
You guys, I was a little bit all over the place,
but put it together, you got it, you got it.
Just don't allow other people to stress you.
If something's bothering you, know who you can go to
and who you can talk to about bothering you
and know when to release it and say,
it's not worth my time, why is this even stressing me
or bothering me?
Have a conversation with yourself.
Put it on paper, put it in your own mind and think it over.
Everything that you think doesn't mean it's real
and it doesn't mean it has to come out of your mouth
because you thought it.
Cause once it comes out, you can't take it back.
Just let that bullet out of that gun.
Once it's shot, you can't go get that bullet back,
put it back in the gun and undo what you did.
Your mouth is a bullet.
You move that tongue, start moving that air around.
You cannot suck those words back into your mouth.
Tread lightly.
It's me.
You can find me at Esma Queen.
No, I'm Sonia M.
I don't even remember.
I think I'm Sonia M at libbymotivation.com
or you can email us at libbymotivation07 at Gmail.
I received a couple of requests.
I am going to do these with guests.
One of my favorite guest speakers is Eric Jones.
I'm waiting and as soon as he's ready,
we're gonna come to y'all with one of these.
I think he is, he's gonna lead that podcast.
So I have another podcast as well
that I am not so familiar with.
There is a pastor that I interviewed over a decade ago.
He would be the perfect person to do a podcast
with this about.
So I'm not even gonna share it with you guys now.
It's going to be exciting though.
If I can find him and get him, oh my gosh,
it's gonna be unbelievable.
Probably one of my best podcasts.
So everybody have a great day on purpose
and I will talk to you again soon.