Managing Stress

MANAGING STRESS ::

Adult life seems to be full of fun and unlimited possibilities. You can go wherever you want, do whatever you want, and never think about consequences. But when you grow up, you understand that there is nothing fun about being an adult. You have thousands of responsibilities, hundreds of daily tasks to accomplish, and the consequences are the only thing you can think about. You may live in the state of permanent stress. You have no right for a mistake. You have no time for having rest. You can’t tell someone that you cannot handle your problems. You need to be strong, you need to work hard, and you need to find a solution to every problem that appears.

Stress in Modern Life

With every year, the level of stress increases. Unfortunately, no one is surprised today when a 30-years old person has a stroke. The situation becomes worse: even children suffer from stress. They have sleep disorders, problems with concentration and nutrition, and they do not even understand that the reason for this lies in the habits of their parents and surrounding society. It seems that for the next generation stress will be the next cancer.

Still, today we can handle the stress. It requires time, attention, and effort, but the results – strong mental and physical health – are totally worth it. There are several approaches to stress management. These approaches can be divided into two large groups: something that you can do to decrease stress level at the current moment and methods that you need to introduce into your life and make them your habits.

Change Your Life to Get Rid of Stress

Of course, you cannot eliminate stress from your life for good. For our bodies, a stressful situation is everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. Your stress management will be more effective if you build stamina and make your

body and mind strong. Thus, you can prevent the negative effects of stress.

Everyone will experience stress in different aspects of their lives; it may be at work, with their family, or with their health. However, whatever might be the cause of your stressful day, it creates the same effect on your body, mood, and even on other people.

Life is full of hassles, demands, and if people don’t meet expectations or deadlines, the tendency is that our mind will be exposed to chaotic thinking and tiredness. This is how stress come out that can generally invade and ruin the enjoyment of your life. For many people, stress is a normal part of life that usually appears in everyday situations. Stress isn’t always bad; however, dealing with stress is usually not good. Mild stress can help you deal with pressure and motivate you to do your best and finish your work before the deadline.

Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened, upset, and anxious. It may seem that there’s nothing you can do about stress. However, difficulties in dealing with this emotion may result in risk and danger to your health, physically and mentally.

Anyone experiencing stressful situation may be at risk of losing control of their emotions, which sometimes could ruin your ability to make decisions rationally. How to know if the anxiety is too much in dealing with your stress? How important is it to gain a deeper understanding about stress and what are the necessary things to do when dealing with such emotion? Feelings such as worry, and anxiety are just some of the common results of stress. Being stressed is sometimes healthy in order for a person to be alert and act. However, there are certain points in human life, where people cannot manage dealing with their stress.

Stress management effectively starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. At first, it may not be easy as you may tend to overlook your own stressful feelings and behaviour. However, providing a solution to a problem always starts with identifying the problem or cause. The best

remedy for stress is self-examination and taking significant actions that can definitely help you lessen your worries and fears. Examples include taking a break for a few minutes to practice some deep-breathing exercises, relaxation, and entertaining yourself like going for a walk or going shopping. These are just a few examples that can usually help people ease their stressful day. In addition, if you cannot remove the stress, remove yourself. If you are not getting along with your company, it is important to slip away and find a new sanctuary to work in.

There are several negative effects of stress on your health such as an upset stomach, recurring colds, headaches and insomnia. If you are having difficulty dealing with stress, it would also be best to seek professional help from a doctor or therapist.

TIPS FOR REDUCING THE STRESS

Below are a few tips on what we can do to reduce stress in our life.

1. Healthy Nutrition

We are what we eat. If your daily meals consist of fries and other fast food, you have severe problems with nutrition. A person needs to consume not only enough calories (fast food has too many of them, causing obesity) but also enough elements and vitamins. When you consume good food, your body receives enough energy to be productive all day long and build the important connections between your blood, cells, and the nervous system.

2. Regular sports

If you suffer from stress regularly, you need to change your daily activities. The best way to get rid of stress (and prevent it) is regular sports classes. It does not matter what type of class you choose, swimming, gym or yoga, you just need to make your body move. While moving, our endocrine system starts to produce hormones helping to lower the impact of stress. Besides, if you feel stressed right here and now, you

can also use sports as the way to manage stress.

3. Meditation

If you are looking for simple ways to fight stress, then regulating your breathing can help. Our breath is a natural and most important function of life and carries vital life energy. It is a known fact that if we stop breathing for long enough, then we die. Despite this fact, most of us take our breathing for granted and rarely stop to think about it. Find out how breathing properly can help to relieve symptoms of stress and calm and relax your mind.

When we are stressed, our body responds in preparation for "fight or flight" and we suffer various symptoms such as sweating, increased pulse rate, racing heart, and fast, shallow breathing. In earlier times this was necessary for our survival when hunting or protecting ourselves. However today it is usually only our perception of danger or negative thoughts that produce this reaction, so the body has few ways to deal with the effects.

Regular attacks of stress and anxiety start to turn our fast, shallow breathing into a habit. They may decrease our ability to breathe properly and could leave us with breathing difficulties such as asthma. Often in today's society, we do little aerobic exercise and therefore we rarely breathe deeply. Our breathing simply becomes shallower than it needs to be as a matter of habit.

Just as stress and other states of mind affect our breathing, the way that we breathe affects our state of mind. When we breathe, we are taking in oxygen through the lungs to the brain and the cells in the body. Shallow breathing can affect the amount of oxygen circulating in the body. This makes us feel sluggish. The way we breathe also affects the amount of energy in our bodies. When our breathing is irregular and erratic, we are likely to feel lacking in energy.

Of course, it is not just the body that is affected by the way that we breathe but the mind also. For centuries disciplines such as yoga and meditation have involved using the breath as part of their

techniques. Use of the breath is an important part of performing yoga postures. Breathing meditation is common to calm the mind as part of preparative practices for meditation. Breathing meditation consists of watching the breath as we breathe in and out whilst trying to ignore all other distractions to the best of our ability. Concentrating on the breath has long been known to quiet and calm the mind.

In the same way as used in meditation, breathing exercises can be used to fight stress and quiet the mind and body. These are great because they are simple and free, and you can do them anywhere. Simply concentrating on our breathing whilst drawing deeper, slower breaths can help us to relieve stress and relax our minds. Breathe deeply through your nose and feel your diaphragm move. Watch the breath coming in and going out. Try to ignore all other distractions.

When you breathe, allow yourself to enjoy the experience of being a living being. Mostly we forget to do this and move through life very unconsciously. When we can quiet our minds, we can find peace and receive insights and access to our subconscious. Only when we become conscious of how we breathe, can we start to correct this.

So, to fight stress and find more energy, try watching your breath to make sure you are breathing efficiently. Get into the habit of taking deeper breaths. Improve your breathing through breathing exercises and regular aerobic exercise. Breathing properly will help you to cope with stress and improve your well-being.

Ability to calm down your mind and keep your emotions under control is precious. Regular meditations help to find out methods to remain calm and preserve a clear mind in different life situations. Meditation is the habit that will change your life even more dramatically than quitting smoking or drinking alcohol. First of all, it will help you release your hidden potential. You will be able to find answers to the questions that have been bothering you for a long time. You will be able to understand what exactly you want. You will learn how to listen to yourself and how to use this knowledge in your further life.

4. Sleep at Night

Night sleep is a key element of your strategy to prevent negative effects of the stress. At night, our bodies produce the most important hormones that help us beat stress. If you sleep in the daytime, your body cannot sufficiently perform its functions. Besides, you need to sleep at least 6 hours to give yourself time to have a rest and relax.

5. Positive Thinking

Stress ruins our mental health. To prevent that, you need to teach your mind to be strong and believe in the best outcomes. Positive thinking is an easy and effective way to enhance your mental health and make it ready to beat any complication or challenge. If you feel that you can no longer take your emotions under control, give yourself a break. Try to get rid of all negative thoughts and start thinking about positive moments. Imagine that you are sitting on the shore of the ocean, observing the waves and listening to nature. Or remember your childhood when mom’s smile made you the happiest person in the world.

6. Be Pro-Active

Lazy people suffer from stress more frequently than those who have an active life. If you have something to do, you do not have time to make up problems and think about them. Each time you notice that stress level is rising, start doing something that requires effort and concentration from you. For some people, the best solution for stress is to work with their hands. Other people prefer to delve into studying or investigation. Try different methods to understand what works perfectly for you.

Another approach that will help you beat the stress is to learn something new. However, you need to be careful with this approach. First of all, the theme should be interesting, and

secondly, you should not get irritated when you cannot cope with some new tasks

7. Do What You Like

It has been noticed that students who admire writing do not suffer from writing an essay. They do it easily in comparison to the students who do not love what they do. If you notice that everything in your life creates additional stress, change what you do. If you admire writing but work as an accountant (and you actually hate your job), quit it and give a try to writing different types of thesis statements for a magazine. If you cannot quit the job, introduce your hobbies to your life and make them more important than the things you do not like at all. Of course, it is difficult to change your approach to life in a couple of days. But you need to work on it to get rid of the stress and make your life more comfortable.

Stress should not be your friend. It should not guide you through your life and spoil its best moments. You need to take your life under control and make it better. Develop a habit to fight against stress and find the ways to eliminate it from your life. These 7 tactics will help you choose the right way to beat this problem and enhance the quality of your life.