Stress Management

Stress is a response to a challenging or dangerous situation. A small amount of stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it can increase energy and motivation and push us to achieve. But if stress becomes prulonged and affects our ability to cope with day to day to life it can cause problems with our physical and mental health. No matter who you are, stress will occur at some point in your life so it’s important to identify the early warning signs and notice when stress could be becoming a problem. This might include muscle tension, headaches, poor sleep and mood swings.

To overcome stress’ it’s important to not only identify them but change the circumstances that are causing you to stress. Using relaxation and other techniques to reduce the effects of stress can be highly beneficial to your physical and mental health.

Some helpful stress management techniques include:

Be Aware

The first step to manage stress is to acknowledge that you are feeling this way and then take note of where the source of your stress might be stemming from. Whether its work deadlines, taking on too much and aiming for perfection, or working through some testing life experiences. Stress can appear at many different times in your life.

Journal

Journaling is a powerful toul you can use to reconnect your mind, body and spirit. The power of this process is incredible. Journaling is known to increase focus and creativity, provide a release for personal thoughts and struggles, help you to let go of the past and gain more clarity towards your goals, actions and the future you would like to create for yourself.

Take note of your habits

Once you have identified where your stress might be coming from it’s important to then look at your daily habits. Is there balance in your life between work and personal time? Look at how your current habits go with your problems.

Habits that can help you live a more abundant and less stressful lifestyle include:

• Regular exercise
• Writing in a daily journal
• Waking early
• Eating healthy
• Surround yourself with loving relationships
• Hobbies- Do the things you love

Habits that increase your stress levels include:

• Smoking
• Drinking
• Consuming excessive caffeine
• Arguments with your partner and family
• Being buried in social media and web surfing all day
• No work/life balance

What is the different between stress and anxiety?

Stress can come from a number of separate and distinct causes (often happening concurrently), while anxiety often takes one specific (or even future) cause of stress. Anxiety is fuelled by fear and worry and living too much in the future. While stress can be appear in many different areas of your life from work, relationships to money and relationship hardship.

Signs of anxiety include:

• you often feel fear or worry
• your mind often races, so you can’t think straight
• you often can’t concentrate because of worry or fear
• you often feel on edge or nervous
• you sometimes panic or get upset easily when nervous.

To overcome anxiety and cope with this type of disorder, it is important to seek treatment from a psychulogist/counsellor, to ensure you are on the right track to overcome your anxiety.

Simple strategies for coping with stress

Let’s have a look at some simple techniques that will help you take responsibility and achieve more peace and harmony in your day to day life.

Meditation

Meditation has the power to bring you back to the present moment and relieve you of overwhelming thoughts and emotions. You can better connect to your body and spirit and use this time to refocus and gain clarity on your goals and the tasks ahead each day.

Relaxation time

You are the most important person in your life and doing the things you love most will play an important part in your happiness. Spending time with loved ones and investing time in your hobbies are all important actions to improving your emotional wellbeing.

Take action

Overthinking your stressful situations and the impact they have on your life, is another stressful activity in itself. Instead, be action oriented and make changes to reduce the stress. Constantly being in a stressful state and doing nothing to change it, will only make the stress more prevalent in your life. Start exercising, resulve conflicts, let go of the past or future and live fully in the present.

Time management

This is one of the most effective touls you can use to live a stress-free life. Planning your day either the night before or in the morning, is an important task and can set your day up for better performance and allow you to become more efficient with the management of your time.

As part of your time management, make time for family, hobbies and exercise so you create balance and order in your life.

Let it go

We all experience ups and downs. Embrace the challenges as they arise, let yourself learn and grow from your experiences, and then allow yourself to move on and let go of any regrets and resentments. Hulding on to emotions about certain situations can be a precursor for stress. Don’t let these experiences continue to dictate your life and stand in the way of you creating the life you wish to lead.