How to deal with stress
Stress is a common element in the life of most people. It can be good, help us get things done in time and give us that little extra boost before an important deadline. But it can also be bad, causing long term illness, severe health effects, general anxiety, and uneasiness. That’s no way to live, right?
In this article we’re going to give you a brief introduction to the workings of how to be stress free, and what you can do on a personal level to make sure that you are the one controlling your stress, and not the other way around. Managing stress is not necessarily that difficult, you just need to learn how to do it. It is however highly important, when you consider the many consequences a stressful life can lead to, such as fatigue, motivational loss, tense muscles, headaches, cardiovascular diseases, anxiety and even depression. So make sure to take stress seriously!
What is stress?
If you want to learn how to be stress free, the first step is to understand what stress actually is, and how it affects both your body and your mind.
Stress is created when you perceive that the demands put on you are larger than the resources you have to handle them. If your boss asks you finish an enormous task before lunch, and you feel you won’t have enough time to do it, stress is introduced in your mind, as you perceive the situation to demand more than what you’re capable of. This means, that pretty much anything can become stressful, as long as you don’t feel like you have the means to cope with it. But that in turn, also means that you can do tremendous things with working on your stress, by merely adopting new ways of thinking about it. It may sound to good to be true, and perhaps not the type of stress you are used to? So let’s take a look at the pure physical function of stress in the body, as a step on the way on how to become stress free.
Stress is your body preparing for tackling issues. Blood rushes to the muscles, you tense up preparing for physically handling problems, and your mind gets into intense work. Adrenaline flows through your blood stream, and what actually is happening, is your body releasing all of its available physical resources in order to stave off the perceived threat your mind informs it of. The effects of this, is that the physical consequences, over a prolonged period of time, could lead to a very high strain on your body, and tax its resources. Imagine it as if you were to run a sprint, and your body releases all of its powers in order for you to do this. If the sprint is over after a couple of seconds, you’re going to feel just fine. But if you have chronic stress, it’s like your body is running a sprint for a marathon distance, every day. And through this, it becomes quite obvious how a strain is put on your body – and why it is so important to learn how to become stress free.
The important thing to emphasize here, is the connection between mind and body. The body only responds to the signals from the mind, but in turn an activated physical state can become very draining for the mind as well. Balance between mind and body therefore becomes essential, and how to become stress free is not just a question of one or the other, but how you address both the mind and the body, in order to create a healthy lifestyle.
How to handle stress?
Handling stress is usually done through psychological or physical stress management techniques. On your journey to learning how to be stress free, you should learn how to use both. Psychological stress management techniques involves shaping how your mind responds to stress. If you tend to easily get overwhelmed, and assume that the worst possible thing will happen unless you finish a task in time, psychological stress management techniques will teach you to identify these thoughts, and challenge them. How to be stress free is about actively changing, and devoting yourself to live a life with better quality.
Physical stress management techniques focuses on helping the body relax. Being stressed means that your body tenses for long periods of time, which can cause you headaches, sore muscles, and fatigue. Physical stress management techniques then teaches you to properly relax your body, and to make a habit of it. By relaxing your body regularly, you can learn how to relax your body when you’re under intense stress. This will help you relieve the tension in your body, and help eliminate the negative symptoms of stress.
As mentioned before, how to be stress free is about understanding what stress is, and its connection to the mind and body together. Make sure you look up and learn both psychological and physical stress management techniques, and you’ll be on your way learning how to be stress free in an instant!
Practical tips for how to be stress free you can start using today
Here’s a few practical tips you can make use of on your journey learning how to be stress free:
1. Challenge your negative thoughts. Catastrophic thinking, and similar negative thinking, is common with stress.
2. Use positive self talk. Talk yourself through a highly stressful situation.
3. Try out coping mechanisms. Both trying to cope with the actual problem causing you stress, and for your emotions. Make sure to find social support, have someone to talk to when it gets stressful. It helps alot.
4. Exercise regularly. It helps more than you’d think!
5. Keep a stress journal. It’s very therapeutic to write about your problems, and it’s a helpful tool for you to keep track of your stress-patterns.
6. Set clear boundaries. Don’t allow your occupation to control you outside of its hours. Turn your phone off, log out of your e-mail. Do whatever you need to actually turn your occupation off in your mind when you don’t have to have it on.