Stress can affect your health and well- being. Looking into the causes of stress and using techniques to eliminate or reduce stress from your life can do wonders: improve the quality of your life, relationships, as well as, your physical condition. Read the tips below to get you on the road to stress free or stress reduced living.
If you procrastinate, you run the risk of increasing your stress levels without even realizing it. Even though most of us agree that we work best under pressure, the opposite is actually true. Are you actually doing your best when doing it at the last minute? The stress of having the extra pressure on your shoulders from the impending duty that you keep putting off automatically increases your stress level. Rather than procrastinating, complete your work as soon as you receive it in order to reduce your stress level.
A great tip that can help you when you’re feeling stressed out is to do some cleaning. Part of the reason you’re stressed out might be due to the fact that your home is so unorganized. Doing a bit of cleaning around your house can help you out and get you in a better state of mind.
To lower your stress levels. make sure you exercise at least three to five times each week for thirty minutes each session. The exercise can be anything from running and swimming to simply a daily walk. Exercise has the benefit of releasing endorphins, chemicals that enhance your mood, making it a great way to de-stress at the end of a hectic day!
If you have extra time to spare grab a pencil or pen and start drawing or doodling on a piece of paper. This will tap into your creative side and let your mind wander alleviating the stresses that you may have. Draw a picture or random designs to help feel better.
Examine how you deal with stress. Then you can think of ways to cope with it better. Track how you respond to stressful situations over a few weeks. Carefully examining how you responded to each stressful situation allows you to determine if your response was healthy and productive. If the way you handled stress only made things worse, you can seek new ways to manage stress in your life.
One tip to be sure to consider when dealing with your stress, is to make sure that you do not abandon your problems. This is extremely important because many times, things that are causing stress will not go away and postponing them may only make the issues worse with time.
To deal with very stressful situations, it can really help to give yourself some distance. See if you can get away for a day or two and go somewhere calm so that you can think about the problem objectively. Being stuck in the thick of a situation makes it difficult to see what a disconnected observer might find obvious.
If you’ve been feeling really stressed, finding a new hobby or refocusing on an old one can help you relax. Whether it’s gardening, knitting, hiking or painting, a hobby can help you step back from whatever is stressing you and get a new perspective on life. Take time out from each day to engage in your hobby.
In today’s busy world, it’s natural that sometimes you may start rushing yourself and moving too fast. Allow yourself some time to cool down to take everything in a few times a day. Control your life, don’t let it control you. Avoid rushing things throughout the day to keep your stress level down.
Be wary of prescription drugs. While various prescription drugs like Valium, Xanax, and Ativan are often prescribed to treat the symptoms of anxiety, these drugs might actually have a counterproductive effect on our reaction to stress. Just as is the case with common drugs like alcohol and tobacco, prescription drugs can actually make us more sensitive to stressful events.
If you are feeling stressed out about things in your life, take some time to sit down and watch a good comedy. Laughter will help reduce the level of stress hormones and make you feel much better. If you cannot take the time to watch a comedy, at least try to smile for a minute.
Fight stress and stressful situations with deep breathing. Inhale and exhale deeply through the nose at least ten times. Deep breathing can slow down an anxious accelerated heart rate, help relieve shortness of breath, calm jittery nerves and clear your head to help you prioritize your thoughts or ideas and that long need-to-do list.
As stated above, there are many simple ways to combat stress in your life. Reducing stress can make you a better person, make life more enjoyable and even add some years to your life. Use the tips above to help you on the road to reduced, better yet, stress free living!