Stress Management in 5 Easy Steps
Every person get some sort of stress (some more, some less, some always, some sometimes), it is different for different people and we all have our favourite expression when we are stressed. And these expressions vary with your culture, your geographical location and many more factors like these. Sometimes you feel stressed even when you are in good mood, relaxed or sleepy. From my understanding of stress, it can be triggered even by the we relax or work or do our daily chores. Stress is not only by-product overwork, fatigue, sadness or a tragedy.
Since the access to the social media, busy lifestyle and high demands of the society we live in are unavoidable in present times of glittery lifestyle, it becomes very important for us to find the ways to lower and avoid stressful events on daily basis. This would help us to respond to the events instead of reacting to them. As our life is a routine that we follow from brushing our teeth and eating breakfast in the morning to watching TV in the evening; similarly, we can deal with stressful events in our life just by remembering and doing things in a different way. Some of them will become part of your routine in short time and some would take longer, but we have to first start and be persistent.
If you want to reduce stress and eventually kick it out of your life, you need to master the art of time management, this would give you more time to do things you love like spending more time with the family, time to learn a new skill that you had been waiting to learn for a long time, basically you would have freedom to thing you like and love. As your stress level goes down your productivity and performance will increase, and this can take you places in your work.
6 Simple steps to improve your Time management:
1. Start with keeping the record of your time, how you spend it, every detail is import whether it is at work, or with family or time when you are doing nothing. Make note of all the activities, small and big.
. Learn to focus/concentrate on what you are doing, schedule time and stick to it. Delegate less important jobs to free time for more important tasks, as you can’t do everything.
1 3 . When you commit to something, check your schedule and make sure you can manage that commitment in time. Prioritise and avoid committing to less important and avoid over-committing.
4 . Chunk down the big project that look overwhelming into smaller chunks and set the short-term deadlines for these chunks, as it’s easy to complete small tasks rather than working on the whole project. Use daily planner as a reminder and for tracking purposes; this will stop you from procrastination.
We all are different and different coping strategy for stress, you need to find one that works for you, there no one fit all solution for stress reduction. One way is to keep a journal where you can record your stressful event, the triggers, your reaction, frequency (how often) and how did you cope with it. This information can work as a guideline to change the strategies that are not working for you and help you develop new ones. This can be used as a reference guide till you find your best coping strategy.
Your lifestyle choices, habits and behaviours have a direct impact your stress-level. Some of them may result in stress directly and some may not, but they have the power to interfere the ways your body pursues relief from stress.
6 Simple steps to enhance your Lifestyle
Having a support system that you can rely on in the times of stress has a great advantage. But you have to gather this band very carefully as this can be make and break, you need people who you can trust, not people who would add to your stress pool. It has to be your scared band, your sanctuary. This should add value and positivity in your life and make you feel loved, accepted without judgement, valued and respected. There have been several researches showing direct relationship between support gang and stress reduction.
Downward spiral of negative thoughts can make you feel anxious, insecure, depressed, fearful, guilty, full of rage, powerless and worthless. Your body react to these emotional states it would to a sabre-toothed tiger in the jungle, inflexing your body with hormones which in access are toxic for your body. Noticing this downward spiral and what changes happens in your emotional and physical state can be a great start.
Mindfulness practice one of the many ways to kick stress out and has been around for thousands of years. It allows you to have a pause where you can change your response to the stressful event.
Even, Mindfulness and Life Coaches like me can get stressed, even though we are teaching people skills to reduce stress all the time, I can tell from my experience in corporate world of two decades that sitting in the same chair for 8 hours, five days a week can be stressful for most of us. No matter who you are, President of a nation, CEO, mail guy, the guy next door, will have stress as an uninvited guest in your house and especially in your life.
Hope you can develop your strategy to kick out stress from your life permanently. Thanks for taking out your valuable time to read my blog.
Originally published at https://bhupinderssandhu.blogspot.com.