Stress reduction techniques
Are you tired of being stressed?
Has stress stopped and paralysed you form living a normal life?
Has your productivity reduced? And, do you procrastinate more when you’re stressed?
If you are anything like me then the answer is ‘Yes’ to all of the questions above. And, if you are anything like me then you’d like to know, how I overcame immense stress from my job, social life and the unfair curveballs life threw at me. In this post, I am going to break down 7 Supper effective stress reduction techniques.
- What is Stress? signs and symptoms?
- What can stress lead to? How it can negatively affect your life?
- Excercise
- Power of Camomile
- Meditation
- Update your To-Do Lists
- Cut it out
- Fix your Diet
- Ask for help
What is Stress?
Stress is the body’s reaction to feeling overwhelmed, under pressure and threatened. It’s very common, can have both positive and negative effects. Stress can be motivating to help us achieve tasks in our daily life. It can also help us meet the demands of home, work and family life.
However, the stress we are talking about here is when the threshold of negative effects are reached.
Negative stress can often be related to work. This is increased pressure of the job or simply undesirable circumstances in your work life, for instance, target pressure, underperforming, getting fired or in the unlikely event of a lawsuit.
Negative stress can also be related to personal social life. For instance, the increased pressure of family, living situation, domestic relationships etc.
Nevertheless, this can effect you both emotionally and physically negatively.
Signs that you are stressed could be:
- Easily agitated, frustrated, and moody
- Feeling like you are losing control or need to take control
- Difficulty relaxing and quieting your mind
- Feeling bad about yourself, lonely, worthless, and depressed
- Avoiding others
- Low energy
- Headaches
- Aches, pains, and tense muscles
- Chest pain and rapid heartbeat
- Insomnia
- Loss of sexual desire and/or ability
- Nervousness and cold or sweaty hands and feet
- Clenched jaw and grinding teeth
Does that sound like something you are experiencing?
I know I did when I went through the darkest time of my life.
What is the long term effect of untreated stress?
Sometimes it may feel easier to bury yourself in a hole and forget the world exists but this doesn’t make the problem disappear. Instead, it creates more pressure and thus more stress which is self destructive.
If stress is left untreated it can lead to a lot of long term problems which may be:
- Mental Health Problems
- Depression and Anxiety
- Heart diseases
- Obesity and other eating disorders
- Sexual dysfunction, such as impotence and premature ejaculation in men and loss of sexual desire in both men and women
- Skin and hair problems, such as acne, psoriasis, and eczema, and permanent hair loss
Stress reduction Technique 1 – Excercise
GET MOVING!
I know it sounds easier said than done but here is a quick break of what you could to reduce and beat your stress every day.
30 minutes WALK, JOG or RUN
Try going for a walk, jog or run in the morning. Enable yourself to have time to relax and spend time on yourself. It releases endorphin, your feel-good hormone. Most importantly, it keeps your mind occupied on you rather than stressful situations.
Try this phone holder if you go for a run.
Fitness Classes (recommended as it allows you to socialise and keep accountable)
30-45mins Indoor workout
If you need a little motivation, jump on youtube and search for home workout videos that use weights and resistant bands to help boost endorphins around your body.
If you need help try this resistant bands and home weight set.
Stress reduction techniques 2 – Power of Camomile
That’s right Camomile.
Chamomile has some unique properties that can benefit your quality of sleep and calm your nerves. This can help you with anxiety and depression.
Our recommendation is simple.
Drink Camomile tea during the day and before bedtime. It can promote healthy sleep and reduce anxiety and stress levels.
Stress reduction techniques 3- Meditation
Did you know that meditation helped me and millions of people from slipping into the dark world of depression?
Meditation is one of the most powerful techniques that you can utilise in order to instantly relieve stress.
GOOD NEWS!
There are many different forms of meditation to try. Each one is unique and brings its own appeal. The best news is that it is completely FREE.
You might develop a taste for Guided meditation, taking you on a journey as you take slow deep breaths. Or perhaps you might take to the practice of mindfulness, which simply involves being in the moment. Simply pay attention to what you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell while concentrating on breathing deep and slow.
The best time to meditate we have found that it’s either first thing in the morning or last thing at night before bed.
If you are anything like me, then you probably enjoy learning more about things. In particular, I definitely enjoyed exploring the different methods and techniques in meditation. I started by reading a book called ‘Total Meditation- by deepak chopra‘.
Stress reduction techniques 4 – Update your To-do list
Aren’t To-o lists just dreadful?
Why do we try to squeeze in 20 hours of work and tasks into a 8 hour window? Surely we are smart enough to know what our limits are?
Unfortunately, for many of us out there, we have been bitten by this bug called over achieving. We believe that completing more tasks in a day means that we are more productive and successful. In the end we get a dopamine rush every time we complete a task and eventually become addicted to ticking off tasks.
This is where things go downhill.
What we don’t see is that, those major tasks that we need to complete which actually have the highest priority in our lives, are often long-winded tasks that consume a huge amount of our time.
So, we develop a habit to develop small meaningless tasks to fill up our to-do list just so we can tick them off for that sweet rush of dopamine.
This is the endless cycle of stress increasing to-do list.
WE HAVE A SOLUTION!
First thing first, let’s prioritise.
- Split your daily to-do list into 4 columns. URGENT IMPORTANT, NON-URGENT IMPORTANT, URGENT NON-IMPORTANT and NON-URGENT NON-MPORTANT.
- Write each task on your to-do list under the relevant column.
- 50% of your time should be spentt on URGENT IMPORTANT TASKS
- 30% of your time should be dedicated to URGENT NON-IMPORTANT TASKS
- Last 20% of your time should be allocated to NON-URGENT IMPORTANT TASKS
- DELETE ALL OF YOUR NON-URGENT NON-IMPORTANT TASKS
- Dedicate 1 hour of your day to a task that contributes to a long term goal that your aspiring to achieve.
- Only answer your emails at two different 30-minute intervals. E.g. 11-11:30 am and 3:30-4:00pm. You could also include this information at the bottom of your emails as a signature. I use “Sincerely yours. Ps. please note that I check and respond to my emails at 11 am and 3:30 pm. If you have an urgent query please call me directly.”
We 100% recommend reading the book ‘First things First by Stephen Cove’ in order to get contorl over time and life again.
Stress reduction techniques 5- Cut it out where possible
Sometimes it is easier said than done.
But if you can list down the main reasons that are causing you stress and start by cutting those sources out of your life.
Cut out the things that are adding to your stress so you can experience more peace.
Watching the news, being constantly connected to your digital devices, drinking alcohol, and consuming too much caffeine are just a few of the things that may add more stress to your life. Making some changes to your daily habits could be instrumental in helping you feel better.
Stress reduction techniques 6- Fix your diet
Did you know high sugar, high fat and refined carbs diet can drastically effect your body, mind and in turn contribute to your stress and anxiety.
Poor diet can cause a spike in blood sugar levels which will temporarily make you feel good.
But what goes up must come down. And that is the case for your blood sugar levels. When the levels plummet after the spike, you feel low and unmotivated which contribute to your stress.
Instead try eating a balanced diet.
Stress reduction techniques 7- Ask for help
Surrounding yourself with supportive people is the single most important key to stress management. It’s important to get emotional support and engage in your friendship.
Don’t try to do this alone.
Reach out to your friends and support colleagues. Confide with a family member or even a distant friend or relative which can help you become closer and may give you the social support you need.
Sometimes, it helps to join an organisation and attend a support group.
But what I and many others found was that the best thing you can do for yourself in order to beat this and prevent the ongoing long term effect of stress is to get professioanl help.
In this day and age, therapy is not as expensive as it once was and it is now readily available virtually.
Word from VendGrow
There are times in life where it all seems too much. It may seem like a struggle to keep your head above water.
Just know that you are not alone. Millions of people struggle with the same problem as you and it may seem like the whole world is against you, but it’s not. You have many people around you that you can reach out to at VendGrow.