Find Balance: Manage your stress
Finding time for yourself to manage your stress is not selfish.
Remember the adage when flying— breathe your own oxygen, nourish yourself first.
Time for yourself helps you balance your time, energy and behavior to be the best mother/father, spouse, friend, employee, and person you can. Though this is obvious, it is often overlooked.
Stress management seems to be the most difficult change for people to make. Though we can empathize with this difficulty, and understand the commitment needed to make such a change, we cannot shy away from the significant need to implement stress management.
Clearly stated, if you’re not doing some form of stress management, you will sabotage all of your best efforts with diet, exercise, and supplements.
It is just that essential.
Stress is, of course, an inevitable part of life, and it isn’t even all bad. When the total amount of stress you are experiencing at a given time exceeds your ability to cope with it, that’s when stress wreaks havoc on your health.
Since you can’t avoid all stress in life, try to minimize the impact of stress by:
Reducing your total exposure to psychological or physiological stress: Mindfulness (Heart Math is a great option), see also below.
Mitigating the harmful effects of stress you can’t avoid: Identify what causes you stress and plan for steps to put into action.
Adopting strategies for stress management: One easy exercise is walking outside your daily movement for as little as 15 minutes a day on weekdays and enjoying more time on the weekends, solo or with family, friends. Being outside is a plus for releasing the short and long term depleting effects of stress.
If your physician or other healthcare provider says you must reduce your stress, ask what methods they recommend. Perhaps they’ve heard of heart rate variability, Valerie is certified in Heart Math and has an active practice particularly with referrals from doctors. Christopher’s holistic life coach training mentorship is a natural for stress relief, be it situational or life stress.
Here are some guidelines to consider. Some are repeated from paragraph to paragraph, post to post. Maybe your mind will be drawn to the repetition and get your attention!
Reduce the amount of stress you experience
Learn to say no. Know your limits and be aware of over-committing yourself.
Avoid people who stress you out. Limit your time with people who might be prone to drama or conflict, if you can’t avoid them entirely.
Turn off the news, or at least limit your exposure: Realize that part of the news model is to fill the news cycle with content to building audience and ratings. “Choose your news” carefully and try looking for more neutral sources of news. Be an informed citizen and learn what’s going on around you, in the country and around the world but moderate your exposure beyond information.
Give up pointless arguments: You know which ones they are! Watch for a future blog post on this topic. Click here to subscribe to alerts for new posts and information.
Limit your to-do list: Ask yourself which items on your list are essential and see if you can cross anything off your list.
Reduce your exposure to online stress: A social media fast can give you perspective. Start with a weekend without social media— or if you can, stay off your phone or computer except for C&C (calls and calendar) for an entire weekend.