Everyone experiences stress from time to time.
It’s part of daily living. The question is how can you best handle it when stressful situations occur. Here are some tips for coping with and reducing your stress.
1.Trust.
Trust you will get through it. You have experienced stressful situations before, but you always got through them. You will get through them again. You always have. Trust yourself and how resourceful you are and can be. Know that even if you have experienced bad times in the past, they have passed. You’ve adjusted to what occurred. Time heals. Trust it will be ok.
2.Cut down the amount of time you worry and stress.
Ok. So you’re experiencing stress and worry. You’ve thought stressful thoughts and worried for how long? Have you dwelled upon negative feelings? Has it been days, weeks, months? Has it served you or helped resolve the issue faster? Chances are you are going to realize it hasn’t helped to keep thinking about it. Give yourself a time limit to think about it i.e. I will limit myself to thinking about it for 5 minutes each day and spend some time Saturday for 2 hours looking at how I can resolve the situation.
3.The 3D’s of Stress Management
There are 3 ways to handle your stress. D- do something about it. Delay stressing or worrying about it. D dump it let it go. It is out of your control. You find a way to just let it go and let things resolve themselves. To further explain. There are often things you can do for your stress. You can take action and address what’s creating the stress. That might mean changing something in your life, communicating with someone directly to address a stressful situation, venting to a loved one what’s bothering you, doing something physically to resolve your stress etc. Delay means when delay dealing with when that’s appropriate. Sometimes you don’t have to deal with something to a later date. I.e. You’re worried about some future event. Given the event hasn’t happened yet can you delay your worry or stress. Dump it means letting something go that is out of your control. We can only control what we can control The rest we need to just let it go and let it resolve itself.
4.Get up and move
Stress often stores itself in our bodies. Some people experience it in their shoulders, neck, heart area or stomach. One way to shift it is to get up and move. Just moving around will change your physiological state. Move the part of your body you’re experiencing your stress in. Also, ask that part of your body to speak with you. What does it say to you? Does it have a message for you? It also helps in addition to moving to take nice deep breaths. Breathing deeply helps clear the tension away.
5.Stop putting stress on yourself
We often put undue pressure on ourselves. It may be trying to do too much in a day. It may be trying to please people or be perfect. It may be worrying or stressing needlessly or obsessing on negative thoughts. What are you doing to yourself? How can you be more compassionate and supportive of yourself? How can you reduce your stress?