Make Your Own Stress Relief Plan To Get A Life You Want
Stress could be different. It takes different feelings and sensations… different forms and shapes… even colours and sounds. It could be a knot in your chest or stomach, muscle tension, pressure in your head, pain in your body, even shaking or trembling inside. Sadness, tiredness, lack of interest to life, depression, anxiety, anger, and fear – these all could be the forms of stress.
At some point, you could hardly tolerate it. You could even decide that there could be no solutions for stress relief. Is it possible to change this? Is it possible to get a life you want and deserve? My answer is YES! You could do this!
The goal of this website is to help you to design your own path to a life without stress and anxiety.
Where To Start?
You come to understanding that stress seriously affects the quality of your life. Then you question yourself – what should you do about this? How to deal with it? How to get stress relief or, even better, eliminate stress completely? You search the web and see lots and lots of relaxation techniques, tips and recommendations for stress management. Where to start? Wait… Do your homework and make your own plan for stress relief. “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”. This well-known saying is applicable for most of new serious beginnings. Why stress relief should be different? It’s not!
In fact, you are going to make an important change in your life. You want to make your life much better. Could it be useful to commit some time and to make a plan for this? Your proper plan could save you a lot of efforts and provide you with a stress free path to your new life.
Stress Management And Best Stress Relief Strategies
Today stress management is much needed among the chaos of daily living. Can anyone really escape stress today? It’s everywhere it seems, from problems at work to being stuck in traffic to financial woes and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. More is expected from us but more is not given to us in terms of how to deal with it all.
Stress is so common these days that many of us don’t even notice it – it has become part of our normal life. Whatever your stress triggers may be, one thing is certain – your body is feeling it and paying the price. Unfortunately, you can’t avoid stress all together but you can learn to deal with it better and not have it impact you as much.
And guess what – stress management can be easier and even more fun than you thought!
What Is Stress Anyway?
Stress is your body’s natural response to a perceived threat, whether real or imagined, and the way you react to it can vary from person to person. While stress can seem imaginary to you (it’s only in your head, right?), it is very real both physically and emotionally. Although we have come to see stress as negative, it is actually the body’s way of protecting itself from harmful situations.
Stress is your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. But what really happens when we are stressed out? What is the purpose of stress?
Historically, in our human evolution, our brains recognized stressful situations (such as being faced with a dangerous animal or a hostile member of another tribe) and the response was to not only feel stressed, but to also release stress hormones which were necessary and useful in several ways.
Adrenaline, which you have probably heard of, is released by the adrenal gland and it is rightly called the “fight or flight” hormone. This hormone, back in our early evolution, allowed us to either fight with the danger in front of us, or flee it.
Both of these actions (fight and flight) required an explosive use of muscles and energy. This is why when you are under stress your heart rate increases and you breathe more rapidly – both of which are needed for extra oxygen intake in preparation for strenuous physical activity.
Your pupils also get dilated and the blood supply moves to your muscles. Your airways open to allow for more oxygen to the lungs. This is likely why you don’t feel like standing still when you are stressed out. Have you noticed how people stand up and walk around when they first hear stressful news?
The reasons for our stress have changed, but our physiology has remained the same. When under stress, we are expected to exert ourselves physically, but unfortunately our bodies don’t know that we are not in grave danger. Whether late for a meeting or faced with a lion, our response is much the same.
The DIFFERENCE is that we no longer expend the energy our bodies expect us to when under stress. We don’t fight or flee; we don’t even exercise half the time. Our poor bodies excrete adrenaline and then it just sits there, unused. Then it happens again. What effects can you imagine this might have on you without proper stress management?
Adrenaline is not the only hormone to get released when you are under stress. Cortisol, which is always present in your body, is secreted in larger amounts when you are stressed out. Chronic stress occurs when you keep building up cortisol, much like adrenaline, and don’t give your body a chance to recover.
This will lead to chronic stress which in turn can create a slew of physical and emotional health problems. This happens not only because of the released hormones, but because during times of stress, your body actually suppresses the immune system.
With a weakened immunity, how will you fight viruses and bacteria attacking you?? This is also why you might have noticed that you are more prone to getting sick when under a lot of stress. Stress tells us when something is wrong, but beyond that it’s not helpful – so don’t let it linger around for too long.
Effective stress management begins by identifying what your stresses are. The Mayo Clinic states that there are two types of stresses – external and internal.
External stresses are events that are out of your control – things like:
- Unreasonable deadlines at work
- A child getting sick
- A disagreement or fight with spouse or family member
- Traffic
- A neighbour’s constantly barking dog
Essentially, anything that is not occurring within you is considered external. The best thing you can do to treat these is to resist them in the first place. Ensure that you actively engage in stress management and relief activities which make you more resilient to the external stresses.
Internal stresses happen inside of you. The stresses caused by your thoughts, fears, beliefs, lack of confidence, uncertainty, and many other feelings that make you feel uneasy. These feelings don’t even have to be founded for you to feel them and for them to have a real effect on you.
Haven’t you ever feared something that might happen and felt just as upset, angry, scared, or worried as if it had actually happened? Our minds can do tricky things to us, but we can also play that same game with our minds.
Stress management is about knowing how to play the game right back!
YOU control your thoughts so when you feel a thought coming on that is negative and unfounded, change it. It will be difficult at first, but it is entirely possible to shift your thinking.
As an example: “My son hasn’t called yet, I’m worried that something happened to him” can easily be changed to, “My son hasn’t called, he’s probably having a fantastic time and just forgot. It’s just like him – he’ll call when he remembers”.
Let me ask you – isn’t the second scenario a lot more likely to happen AND one that you’ve probably experienced? Bad things usually don’t happen, but we worry about them so much that they in fact do happen in our minds all the time. We make them real.
As mentioned earlier, these thoughts are in your control and can be part of your stress management. Decide that life is good and that good things happen to you (it’s mostly true, isn’t it?) and decide that you don’t deserve stress in your life!
To get you started, browse a few of the pages here to read more about stress management techniques and how to experience every day relaxed, happy, and in control.
Make Stress Relief Management Part Of Your Life!
You will find that as your stress relief management skills increase, life becomes more enjoyable. Life doesn’t always work out the way you planned. Your future is not written yet. Life may have some fantastic surprises in store for you.
There are many stress relief tips you can use. You can overcome stress. Life is too short not to enjoy it. Don’t let the pressures of living it weigh you down.
As time goes on many things in your life will inevitably change. Sometimes this change will be for the best and other times it won’t. There are many events that happen in our world that effect us that we have no control over. Don’t waste your time and energy worrying about the things that you can’t alter.
Some Christian stress relief tips may be helpful in allowing you to accept these situations. Sometimes turning to prayer is necessary for stress relief.
Another way to manage stress can be found through cognitive thinking stress relief. This is a process where you restructure the way you think about situations that cause you stress. First you compare the way you feel and react to different situation. Afterwards you can learn to alter your reactions based on what you discover.
Most things in life are relative. The way you react to a situation depends on the way you perceive it. An additional stress relief management technique is to alter your perception of different circumstances.
Work can give rise to its own stress triggers. From deadlines and unreasonable expectations to threats of downsizing and outsourcing, stress rears it ugly head. Here are some workplace stress relief strategies you can try.
A stressful situation arises. Determine if you are in danger. Evaluate the stimuli that is causing you stress. If the threat is real, protect yourself. If not, practice your stress relief management.
How Do You Reset Stress?
Keep It away:
During your break, or when you are off from work, keep as much technology as you can away. A camera won’t hurt but allowing yourself to go online to check emails from the office or answering calls from work will not take you out from the cause of stress but will constantly place you in it.
Yes, it may be minimal because you are away but it still is the same stress. Make sure you lay out everything before leaving work for your rest day so your boss doesn’t have to phone you over the weekend.
Quality Time:
We often miss deadlines or cram to get to one because we do not give quality time at work. Our attentions are diverted with too much multitasking required plus the insertion of possible personal problems that the time we actually spend to work is stretched due to many lapses during working hours. When you are at work, set your goal and divert yourself into a clear focus.
Too Much Time:
Know when you are already spending too much time at work. It is time to get away from it, clear your mind off it. The more you feed into your mind and the less output you give, the more stress builds up. Know when you need to stop and take that credited leave as an advantage to you. You need to relieve yourself from the stress and take your eyes off from the stressors. Only then will you be able to face it again.
If you want to relax from stress, you need to start building enough time to reset it. This is a common problem with a lot of people who want to do a lot of things at certain periods of time. They will begin to think that they don’t really have time. That is not true.
There is a time for everything. It is only the commitment to do so that is becoming a problem. What you need to do is to make sure that you take your breaks and you take your day offs without any excuses. Work and other stressors will still be there when you get back.
There is a reason why day offs are mandatory in every state. No one can be punished by taking a legal day off from work and the stress that it causes.
Make it a point that you, your loved ones and your friends take the necessary time to reset the stress that you feel. Feel free to like and share this post for them.
Stress Meditation Techniques
If you are suffering from stress, meditation can be a great way to relieve the symptoms. Buddhist monks and nuns, who meditate often, are well known for being some of the calmest people on earth. Of course, meditation is practiced by Christians and people of many other religions too. Fortunately, you can get a lot of the same benefits without booking in for life at the nearest monastery.
In order to relieve stress, meditation is usually practiced regularly. It is possible, of course, to sit down and meditate whenever you feel especially stressed, but often times this is not convenient. Anyway, you will get better results if you practice it often.
Try to meditate every day at the same time. For most people the best time is either first thing in the morning, last thing at night or after an exercise session.
Anti stress meditation does not have to be practiced for very long. It is much more effective to sit for 10 minutes, six days a week, than to meditate for a whole hour once a week.
So here is how to do it. First make sure that you will not be interrupted during your stress meditation time. You might want to put a ‘Do not disturb’ notice on the door. Switch off your phone. Use some kind of timer or alarm so that you do not have to keep looking at a clock.
Then find a comfortable position either sitting or lying down. Lie flat on your back on the floor or on a mat, with no pillow. If you are sitting, you can be cross-legged on a cushion on the floor in the traditional meditation posture or use a chair. Be sure to keep your back straight. In a chair, have both feet flat on the ground.
Be aware of your breath flowing in and out through your nostrils. You can either close your eyes or have them slightly open, looking down. You may find it helpful to work through the body, relaxing each part. Do not forget the muscles of the face, which carry a lot of tension.
You will find that thoughts and emotions arise while you are doing this. Try to let them go. They will pass by themselves if you do not get caught up in them.
Some people find it helpful to listen to some relaxing music or sounds or water, birdsong etc. while they meditate. There are many relaxation CDs that you can find in a music store or online.
It is better to get something that is specially designed for relaxation and does not include any lyrics. Songs can be very emotive and can arouse strong feelings, making you more stressed instead of less.
Alternatively, you might want to investigate binaural beats which play a special rhythm designed to set the brain’s waves to a frequency that is associated with deep relaxation. You can play these on an MP3 player with stereo headphones.
Just one warning: you may want to do this in the evening rather than earlier in the day, because binaural beats played during anti stress meditation can be so relaxing you will want to go to sleep right after you finish!
Now Is Your Chance To Know The Great Remedies For Stress!
Aside from self-discipline and retraining your attitude, there are various natural remedies for stress than can help you lighten up the load. If you feel stress in the middle of the day and feel like you can need some pampering to get on for the rest of the week, better try some very useful remedies to bring back a rejuvenated you!
Remember that when our mind is relaxed, our potentials are at their best! When you are stressed you can’t focus and perform at your fullest and little by little, it will start to swallow you. Imagine what you can do at work and with your family when you are stressed free and you’re always on the mood. Smile, life’s problems can be dealt with.
Often, people are afraid of taking prescribed medicines to counter stress but we are lucky that researchers have found that there are natural remedies to fight off anxiety and stress.
Remedies For Stress
Kava Root
Kava, which originated from the South Pacific, has been proven many times to be efficient in treatments of anxiety. It has performed as well as the well-knows drug Valium, Xanax but without any negative results.
Passion Flower Herb
This herb is used to calm the nerved. It is a very powerful protective compound containing antioxidants, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. This has been found to be very effective in calming the nerves.
Lemon Balm
It has been proven that 600mgs of this material improves the mood and allows the body to be calmer and alert. It has also been proven to be a good agent for those who have problems sleeping. It is very inexpensive and allows you to feel calm in minutes.
The process of relieving your body from stress takes time and a lot of discipline from you. Remember that these stresses didn’t even have to take place had you been able to manage your time and daily routines without causing too much strain in your body.
- Research. There are other available remedies that are recommended to combat stress.
- Self-discipline. Recognize lack of discipline within yourself– from your posture at work, to the way you handle your family and do something to work with it.
- Learn from the experts. Research has been done to counter stress. You are only a few clicks away
- Listen to your body. If it’s telling you that it’s tired, don’t push yourself too much. Know how to take a rest without compromising your tasks.
- Be more attentive to your needs. It’s often not easy to apply these remedies for stress to your daily life but with awareness and motivation, you’d be able to slowly remove the stress clinging on your shoulders.
Take time to share and like this article as it opens our eyes to additional ways of coping with stress. Other people you know may find it useful for their lives too and you never know how much you’ve helped them live healthier by sharing what you discovered today.
Stress Relief Tips
Stress is unhealthy for your body and your mind. Your body reacts to stress by releasing the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone causes an increase in your blood pressure and your blood sugar.
Stress can be managed by using the following techniques.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
While under stress you may begin to breathe rapidly and shallowly. Diaphragmatic breathing allows you to breathe fully and slowly releasing the tension that can cause stress.
To benefit from diaphragmatic breathing you must stop and relax your body. Allow your breathing to become regular. Inhale slowly and deeply, and then exhale slowly through your nose. Allow the tension to seep from your body with each breath that you exhale.
Close your eyes and imagine a place of tranquillity. Breathe like this for several minutes, relaxing more and more with each breath. You will begin to feel your stress go away.
Stress Free Retreat
Take a break from your stressful situation. Many times we cannot see the forest for the trees. You may have a situation that you just cannot seem to solve. The solution has eluded you and your stress level is increasing.
There are many ways to take a quiet retreat. Find your quiet place and retreat as often as is necessary. You may be surprised to return to your problem and actually see how to solve it.
The purpose of a retreat is to take your mind off of the problem. Focus on something that will quiet your inner turmoil and allow your body to relax.
Take a nice long walk and look at the surrounding scenery.
Find a comfortable spot and put on your favorite music or get lost in a good book. Pamper yourself and soak in a nice hot tub or go get a massage. Retreat ideas are endless. The main purpose is to allow your mind to rest and be at peace.
Think Positive
Many times you may allow a stressful situation to take over and pull you down a long path toward destruction. You have the power to stop the downward spiral. Realize what your inner thoughts are about the situation. Sometimes you can get stressed just remembering an incident.
Allow yourself to think and speak positive over your stressful situation. You will be amazed at how well you handle stress if you will learn to speak affirmations over yourself and the situation. You can do this and you will overcome. Believe it.
Muscle Relaxation
Stress affects your body in many different ways. Muscle tension causes your entire body to hurt. You may not realize how stressed you are until you actually pay attention to your muscle tension.
Is your neck always stiff? How are gripping the steering wheel while you are driving? White knuckle driving is a stress indicator. Headaches, backaches, leg cramps, the list can go on.
Learn to relax your muscles one group at a time. Lie down, totally relax, and close your eyes. Now focus on your muscle groups. Tighten each group and then relax them. Start with your toes and work all the way up to your forehead. You may have to tighten and relax each muscle group three or four times before the muscles actually relax.
Put some quiet music on while doing this so that your mind will stay off of your stressful situation. Continue to relax your mind while doing this exercise.
Meditate
Meditation is a whole body relaxation at once. Find a quiet place and just let your body and mind relax totally. Breathe slowly and deeply. Exhale slowly. Do this for at least 20 minutes. Remember; do not think about your stressful situation.
Your goal is to learn how to relax in stressful situations. You may be able to incorporate some of these methods throughout your day, while some of the other methods require a quiet place of solitude. Take charge of your body and do not allow stress to cause physical harm to you.
5 Steps For Your Own Stress Relief Plan
1. Educate Yourself
Learn what stress is and understand clearly what the causes are and what the effects of your own stress are. Things are not always what they seem. This is especially true for something what we call stress. People often use this word when talking about very different things.
2. Review Your Resources For Stress Relief.
Your ultimate resources are not some “super-new-secret-and-super-effective” techniques. Your ultimate resources are: Your Mind, Your Body, and Your Time. Whatever you do in your life is dependent of these ultimate resources, which are your major life assets. Understand what you have.
3. Find Out What You Want.
This is not about just saying something like, “I want to be happy!” See your desired life, feel it, make it live with all possible details. When you know what you want, figure out what are the steps toward this life, what are your desired changes.
4. Learn New Skills And Techniques.
See what tools are available to help you on your way to your stress free life. Decide for yourself what fits your personality.
5. Make Your Personal Step-By-Step Plan.
This takes into account your goals, your likes and dislikes, your life style and your time.
How To Remove Stress From Your Life
Stress is something everyone must deal with in life. Stress doesn’t have to RUN your life, though! Taking control of stress and not letting it overwhelm you can be just a matter of determination and proper technique.
Here Are Some Wonderful Ways To Deal With Stress:
It is important to learn how to manage your stress levels. There are many health problems associated with high levels of stress, including high blood pressure, heart conditions, depression, insomnia, and strokes.
Getting the right amount of rest will help alleviate some stress while also helping to lower the risk of developing these diseases.
TIP! Do the best you can to control your stress levels. Elevated stress can result in health problems such as depression, ulcers, insomnia, stroke, muscle aches as well as heart attacks.
Create a statement that is brief, positive and true that will assist you in redirecting your thoughts and coping with your stress. As you repeat your affirmation to yourself, you will be able to stifle that wheedling, pessimistic voice from within. Reassure yourself that you are competent, calm, and confident, so that you can stay calm and stress-free.
There’s nothing like a bit of exercise to help you battle stress. It won’t have effects at first, but if you keep at it each day, the effects will start to compound over time. In addition to relieving stress, exercise provides several other benefits. It boosts your confidence, and makes you feel like you are in control.
TIP! Think calm thoughts, don’t clench your teeth, and slowly relax the jaw. Stress has a tendency to make us tighten certain muscles, and the muscles around the jaw are most commonly affected.
Analyze what causes your stress. It is crucial to understand just what is contributing to your stress. Stress can result from dealing with anything or anyone. As soon as you figure out what is causing you stress, you can eliminate it, or at least minimize it.
Professional Massage
TIP! Keep the word “stress” out of your vocabulary. If you envision yourself being hungry, you can convince your body that you are famished, this same theory holds out for being stressed.
A professional massage makes a great way to manage and purge your stress. Stress can cause muscles to get tense and stay that way. Scheduling a professional massage can work your muscles back into comfortable shape.
If you are a teenager or 20, playing video games like Final Fantasy can relieve stress. When you’re playing a video game, you are focused on it and no other thoughts consume your mind. You can play alone or with others; both ways improve your mood.
TIP! Write about the stress you are experiencing. Often times, we have difficulty discussing the matters which stress us most, but when it’s just between you and your writing, things have a way of working themselves to the surface and clearing up a great deal of stress.
Use this journal to write down all the amusing things you see and experience in your life. This will not only prove to be an incredible amount of fun, but writing the situations down increases their presence within your thoughts, which leads to generally lighter moods.
An effective way in relieving your stress and making yourself feel good is by taking a long, soothing bath. Light some candles, add some scented oil to the water, and then simply savour the moment. Increase your enjoyment with soothing music, or by reading a book. You can melt your tension away and relax your muscles by giving your brain a breather while soaking in a warm tub.
TIP! If you are dating someone, it is good to go out on a candlelit dinner with that person. This allows you to focus your attention on your loved one and become lost in the moment, rather than concentrating on stressful aspects of your life.
If you are always on the go, there is a good chance that you are thinking and moving too fast. Remember that it is essential to your well being that you take a break once in awhile. So learn to slow down and just breathe. As the day progresses, try and keep calm and avoid rushing, as this can help keep your anxiety down.
You can eliminate some stress by making lifestyle changes. Your body will be more capable of coping with the effects of stress if you follow a nutritious diet, enjoy regular exercise and get adequate rest each night. When you take care of your body, you feel better about yourself and that will help you when you are trying to relax in stressful times.
TIP! If you strive to make honesty part of your code of ethics, you can minimize the stress and anxiety in your life. Even telling little white lies adds to your stress as you will worry about the truth being revealed.
Consider meditation. Meditation provides an opportunity for both physical and mental relaxation. Your routine life will experience a higher level of calmness if you put this into practice. This also helps you fight stress in especially difficult situations.
The making of the effort to keep stress as a minor annoyance, instead of a major one, takes time. Tuck these tips away for a time when you’re experiencing stress, and then you’ll feel more in control of your feelings. Don’t let stress take over your life; use these tips to deal with it.
TIP! Music can cut down on any stress you might be experiencing. When you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed, put on your favourite song and listen to it intently.
Stress Relief Tips Today
Today is a new day, treat it as such. From this day forward each time you wake up, take in 3 long but slow breaths and slowly blow them out. Each breath is:
- Calming your body.
- Preparing you for the day ahead.
- Engaging your mind for the next task ahead of you for this day.
Each and every breath helps resolve you in that moment, as things become clear with new ideas that arise as how you could have handle the previous day. You’re unaccomplished task from the previous day begin to dissolve as you find clarity in handling future situations that arise.
Use this special time and place to be calm. Free your mind and body of all worry, all regret, all disappointment, all anger and grief.
Stress Relief Tip #1 ACTIVITY: Engaging
Always look back on your previous day regardless of how bad or how good it was. Always try to find the best parts of that previous day and live in that moment for a few minutes. This is really helps your mind in dealing with the stress of the previous day of any outcomes that you feel you can handle better. All are subconsciously improving on your actions to that situation or one similar to that.
Practice this act of engaging the mind each day and you will see that you will accomplish so much more. At the first sign of being stressed, go back to this mindful, engaging technique and start all over again until you have reached your place of calm understanding.
Stress Relief Tip #2 REST: Calm and Clarity!
The very best thing that you can do for yourself is to eat, hydrate and rest! I know it’s the simplest thing but is mostly overlooked by 89% of Americans today.
Stress is easily brought on by not eating or drinking water regularly. When you don’t get the number of hours of sleep that you need each night, you are only setting yourself up for additional stress.
Limit the amount of salt, sugar, caffeine and alcohol in your diet. Drink plenty of clean, pure water each day and do at least moderate exercise each day. This will breathe new life into your brain, and body all while nourish all of your vital organs.
Take time to breathe properly! Take deep belly breathes to send pure oxygen to all of your body. Laugher is a stimulant to release feel good overall happy emotions into the body. It is food for the soul! Spend time doing the things that please you most. Engage in healthy and fulfilling relationships and work on problems that would erode the closeness that you have with someone special.
When we are content and living a balanced life everyday stresses seem to pale in comparison. We are better equipped to deal with the unexpected of everyday life. But you must find some way to leave your build-up of dealing with everyday life. Or you will find yourself bottle up with a lot of emotions that will put you on the borderline to explode like a volcano.
Fact: Stress Makes You Ugly
If you have recently looked at yourself in the mirror and wondered why something seems to be wrong, you might start thinking that stress makes you ugly. Many of us sometimes blame it to the clothes we wear or to the uneven colour of the skin or even to how our make-up looks on us.
We look at ourselves wondering what could be wrong why our looks have drastically changed for the worst. We try to find something different to wear, a different make-up to put on or even try different products that could hopefully solve the problem but it never really goes away but gets worst.
Your skin and other external factors may not be the cause of this, it must be just stress! How bad have things been going recently in your life? How many problems do you encounter daily and how well do you handle them? How much stress is bothering you and how do you cope up and manage it?
Stress makes you ugly. When you are stressed, you feel the problems wear you down. It does not only make you feel physically torn out but also affects your personal appearance. You have to work extra-long hours facing the same problem every day that it already makes you look haggard.
You also need to keep up with your social life in hopes of relieving stress instead of resting which make you end up restless and tired all weekend when you should have been resting well.
Stress makes you develop those eye bags from nights when you couldn’t sleep and also makes your skin have problems—getting too oily, developing acne—like abnormalities that you don’t usually have. Stress is the cause of all those wrinkles and the bad way your body looks.
How To Fight The Signs Of Stress?
Take a rest. There is a reason why it is called rest days or day off. It means you are given the luxury to enjoy your day and make use of the time to relax. Do not bring home your work or worries. They will not disappear. Nest week, when you get back to work or school, they will be back so indulge your free time in as much rest as you can get.
Sleep on time. The necessary hours needed for your sleep depends on your age and the amount of work you do daily. Do not go to too many parties when you know your body needs to rest. Your social status and social friends will be there time and time again. You don’t need to work yourself out every Friday or Saturday nights just to make up with your social life. You need to sleep and you owe that to your body to recuperate.
Drink enough vitamins. Due to your daily schedule and the things that you do, eating the right kind of food may not be enough. Your body needs additional supplement for it to keep up with your life style. Do not be too thrifty for your body when you can afford to do so. There are a lot of good vitamins that can help sustain you in your daily battle against stress and your daily routine.
If you keep on wondering what seems to be wrong with your physical attributes when you were looking good just a few weeks or months back, you may need to go check on your stress level. How are you coping with the daily turmoil that life throws to you?
It is a fact that stress makes you ugly by affecting how you look physically. When the body is pressed to abnormal changes that make it lose its balance, you need to make sure that you are fully equipped to face it and go back to the balance that you normally have. Do not wait until it’s too late but work on your stress well now.
Stress At Work
The phrase ‘stress at work’ has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it simply refers to stress experienced while on the job, usually because of some aspect of it. On the other hand, it can mean that stress is at work on you – stress is working on you, and usually in ways that are extremely unpleasant.
These two meanings are not completely unrelated. When you endure work-initiated stress the results are harmful to your physical health and your mental well-being. As with any problem, it helps to look at the fundamental causes in order to work towards a long-term solution.
There are a hundred immediate possible causes for job-related stress. Employees and managers alike are often given unrealistic deadlines to make near-impossible goals. Competitive fast-paced business can be fun. But when the intermediate goals don’t serve valid business ends – improving sales, optimizing work flow, enhancing communication – they are generally resented.
Add to that the all-too-common unreasonable boss or uncooperative co-worker. In companies large and small there are too frequently people in charge who are disrespectful and poorly qualified to lead others. They are generally more interested in flattering their manager than improving productivity and getting the job done.
Those two factors – misdirected goals and unfair managers – explain the response that most people give when asked if they experience work-related stress and why: absence of control over their lives.
Many individuals have well-developed problem solving skills. Women in the workplace who are also mothers know very well how to manage time, multi-task, multiple demands and innovate new solutions. They practice those skills every day at home. They also know a bit more than most about how to settle disputes among individuals, all of whom may be partly wrong and partly right.
Men, too, have ample experience in prioritizing resource expenditures, responding to complaints and deciding when to push and when to compromise. They practice that at home every day.
But the workplace often fails to mirror the freedom to use one’s thinking skills and the power to enact a workable solution. More often, goals come from above and little debate is allowed. Individuals employed in organizations of that kind experience obligations without authority – a guarantee of stress.
The single most-often cited reason for stress in the workplace boils down to that – demands, but without the resources to meet them. When an individual is placed in the irresolvable conflict between “I must” and “I can’t”, stress is the inevitable result.
Fortunately, some organizations are beginning to recognize this and are taking steps to change. With luck, you may be employed by one.
Stress Management And Nutrition
There is an accepted association between nutrition and stress. Stress can lead people to make poor nutritional choices which can affect overall health. Poor nutrition also can greatly affect a person’s capability of reacting and coping with stress. And because of this, good nutrition is always part of effective stress management.
Here are just some simple tips that would help people use good nutrition as a means to manage the stresses in life.
Eat Breakfast Regularly
A well nourished body always has a bigger capability of coping with stress. The earlier the body is prepared, the better. When a day is about to be filled with stress at work or anywhere else, it pays to keep the body well prepared to handle it as it comes. Bear in mind that stress can easily deplete the body of essential resources that keeps it functioning well.
Too much stress can also induce the body to use up more of a variety of nutrients which can easily lead to serious deficiencies. If the body is not prepared to cope up with the changes that stress can bring, it would likely react negatively in some way or the other.
To prepare the body for the stress ahead, people should need to keep their body well-stocked with nutrients. If done early in the day, the better the chances that the nutrients are well stocked up to handle the body’s needs. This can be assured by eating breakfast regularly.
But the ability to cope with stress can be worsened by skipping breakfast which is the most important meal of the day. The result would be a body that would react very poorly to stress as it comes. But by eating a well-balanced breakfast regularly, the body is ensured of a build up of much needed resources and nutrients, making it more capable of coping with stress for the day.
A Well-Balanced Meal
Apart from eating breakfast regularly, eating a well-balanced meal should also be considered. What will a breakfast be of use if it doesn’t provide the body with its much needed nutrients? There are certain nutrients that the body needs in order to fight off the effects of stress more effectively. Also remember that stress can speed up the use of some of these nutrients.
When the body is under stress, it starts to produce stress hormones. The stress hormones then trigger the body to excrete a number of essential minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium from the body. These minerals, when present in the body, actually help it cope with the symptoms and physical signs associated with stress.
The essential minerals that are excreted by the body as it produces stress hormones actually help to avoid mood swings and help the muscles to relax. Without them, the body won’t be capable of handling or coping very well with stress and would even make it worse.
Along with essential minerals, more antioxidants such as vitamin A, B, C and E may be needed by the body since it tries to increase the use of such nutrients while it is under stress.
The antioxidants help the body fight the free radicals which are released by the body’s adrenal glands when it reacts to stress. By eating a well-balanced diet, you are helping your body build up on the essential nutrients that it needs to fight off stress.
There are also several nutritional supplements available that would help make up for essential nutrients that may not be provided fully by your diet.