Life can be stressful. In fact it is. You need to learn stress management techniques to get relief. Learn to reduce stress at work, home and in relationships naturally, and cope with stressful situations with ease.
In this highly competitive world, there are innumerable things that can cause stress if you are not careful. Your stress may either be coming from family issues at home, job related tensions at work place, health related issues with your body and financial difficulties you may be facing or all these issues put together. There may be a number of other problems that can also cause stress.
No one can escape it. Stress is your body's way of responding to any kind of demand. A physical or mental experience either good or bad can be the trigger for stress. Our bodies react to these experiences by releasing chemicals into the blood.
One has to learn to manage stress. All stress is not bad. Sometimes we need to be challenged enough to give our best. You must understand the symptoms, identify the causes of stress and ask for help if you can’t manage it alone. Don’t live with it. Do something about it.
There are many different ways to deal with stress and some of the most common methods to reduce stress are given here.
1. Physical Activities and Rest
Our bodies are supposed to follow a cycle of engaging in physical work during the day and take a rest in the night. In fact, rest is so important that your body will give signals if you are overworked during the day. Restore the cycle by changing lifestyle.
Other kinds of stresses are environmental stresses that are created by the surroundings around us. Most common among them are found at work and at home. These stresses can be managed well by self if sustainable conscious effort is made.
Stress levels at workplaces are increasing. Job insecurities, working too hard, bad time management, bad boss and other negative conditions can harm your being by causing stress. Though great companies constantly works to improve work environment, people still get stressed due to their emotional personal traits.
The office stress can be minimized or overcome by building healthy lifestyle during off working hours. Increase fun and pleasure activities with family and friends to cope with stress at work.
With both partners working to cope with the rising costs of living, the traditional sweet home in many cases has become a battleground for fatigued couples. The subconscious behavior caused by the release of accumulated stress during the day on your partner increase more stress.
Help your partner to get rid of anxiety that is causing stress in relationships, and your stress will be reduced over a period of time. This is a long process but worth it as it will not only be instrumental in coping with stress but also in saving a marriage.
Following are simple ways to reduce stress.
Workout for 45 Minutes Daily
Engage yourself in just walking for 45 minutes. Make it your daily routine. Come what may, you will not skip walking. Walking gives you required oxygen supply to the brain by improving blood circulation.
You can engage in any sports, go to the gym regularly or any other strenuous physical activity on a regular basis that makes you sweat.
Physical activity is the best stress buster.
Eat Well and Eat Balanced Diet
Eating a balanced diet and eating well is important for general good health. Stress pushes you to eat junk food and eat more than required. Both these activities are unhealthy and increase your stress.
Eat fruits and vegetables 5-6 times a day and drink lots of water. This will fill up your stomach and you will not crave for food due to stress.
Eating a balanced diet which gives you required quantity with protein, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and other nutrients will release chemicals in the blood which will deal with stress easily.
Sleep Well
Not sleeping enough is becoming one of the main causes of increased stress. It is a vicious cycle – when you are in stress, you won’t get proper sleep. If you don’t get proper sleep you get stress. Break the cycle. Learn how to sleep well. Engage in physical exercise to get tired to get sleep. A consistent effort will bring back a healthy cycle of exercise and rest within a week.
Though physical activities and rest can be the starting point towards your journey to cope with stress and improve the quality of life, there are many other methods that help in dealing with stress effectively.
2. Take Help
Discuss Your Stress With Someone You trust
A friend in need is a friend indeed. Find a friend in whom you can confide. By talking to someone you trust, you are releasing your stress. It is now not confined within you. Even if your friend doesn’t give you any advice, you will still feel relieved.
Many times, friends will give you advice which you wouldn’t have thought yourself because your mind was crowded with stress. It may be a simple common sense, but it didn’t occur to you. When you feel that the situation is not as bad as it appeared to you, you feel relieved. Stress gradually disappears.
Go for Professional Counseling
Our personalities are also the causes of stress. Some of us build up emotional stresses due to setbacks or imaginations. These are called internal stress. These kinds of stresses are difficult to deal with. They require professional help.
3. Engage Your Brain
Stress can be caused by many reasons. Understanding the real causes of stress and then building appropriate strategies to deal with it are crucial to your good health.
Some strategies to deal with certain kinds of stresses are inherent to our personality. In cases such as getting involved in sudden danger we subconsciously react appropriately to the stress. Fight or flight is our natural reaction to such circumstances of survival stress.
Understand the Causes of Your Stress and Organize your self
Anything that challenges or threatens our existence can be considered stress or in other words, stress is your body's way of responding to any kind of demand.
A physical or mental experience either good or bad can be the trigger for stress. Our bodies react to these experiences by releasing chemicals into the blood.
In every case these chemicals add energy and strength. If the stress is caused by any physical danger, then this extra energy usually is released to fight the danger. But when the stress is caused by an emotional stimulant and there is no outlet for this extra energy then the stress builds up to cause harm to your health.
Later on when senses are normal a feeling of guilt can add to stress. Therefore a vicious cycle of stress continues.
So once you understand the cause, you can cope with it.
Build Positive Mindset
A negative mindset is the factory of stress. The whole world is not against you. They are all too busy solving their problems. Everyone goes through a tough time and if you are entangled with someone’s difficulties and are stressed about it then you have to take stock of the situation and be positive.
Think what you can do to resolve the difficulties, rather than worrying about – now what? A positive mind set will drag you out of stress towards a workable solution to the difficulties you are facing.
Change What Can Be changed and Accept What can’t be changed
There are things in life on which you have no control. In fact, it may be the main cause of your stress. Don’t try to change things on which you have no control. Learn to accept it.
If there is heavy rain, storm on bad weather, then you just can’t change it. You need to manage the external threat by changing your circumstances.
Think of those things which are causing stress and analyses them. If you realize that you can’t change the circumstances, then your focus will move to changing your reaction. That realization itself is the beginning of stress relief.
Try all the above and get rid of unnecessary stress.