Amanda Muhammad on Practical Stress Management

On this episode of The Big Plan on Campus, Thomas talks with Amanda Muhammad, founder, owner, and stress management consultant with Mako Mindfulness in Dallas, Texas.

To begin their conversation, Amanda shares her educational background.  She talks about how she began to pursue a career in human resources with a degree from the University of Kansas. While in college, Amanda was having a hard time coping with her stress and discovered new stress management techniques such as taking a stretching class through the recommendation of her brother and found great success.

After obtaining her degree, Amanda discusses her career path and the journey that led her to starting her business Mako Mindfulness in 2015. This path included becoming a recruiter out of college and then transitioning to being a substitute teacher and using that role to share her stress management techniques she learned in college. Once seeing the positive impact her tactics had in her environment, she knew she had to share it with others, especially in the field of education.

Amanda goes on to talk about the most common stressor for educators like lack of resources and financial stress. It is common for teachers to not have the budget to provide things for their students and therefore they purchase these things out of their own pocket. How do you address these stressors? Amanda shares how she teaches educators individual skills for resilience. By creating awareness around stress, teachers can understand how they react to it and the warning signs. She provides the resources and plan to help combat stress before it happens. Amanda emphasizes that being proactive about stress and practicing stress management BEFORE you get stressed is key.

Thomas and Amanda then touch on gratitude. Gratitude is a big part of what Amanda teaches. Gratitude has many health benefits and gets easier as you practice it. You should practice it often by just saying “thank you.” What are other ways to implement gratitude? Amanda has curated the MAKO Method which is a combination of breathing, stretching, gratitude, and journaling. Write gratitude lists, have a gratitude partner, and talk about the peak and pit of the day.

Lastly, Amanda talks about her specific process she often utilizes when she is hired by a school or district to develop a stress management strategy. This includes the structure of her stress management sessions, and the specific ways she helps their educators to combat the stress they feel on a daily basis.

To conclude the episode, talks about free guide he wrote “The Five Gaps and Five Solutions in Financial Planning for Leaders in Higher Education”. You can find that essay here.

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