Stress – De-stress: Take it easy

Slowly, slowly, slowly…

Stress can kill you, from the inside out, and often we don’t even realize we’re stressed until it’s too late. So what can we do? How can we identify stress? And most importantly, how can we remove it?

As easy as the initial answers may seem, or as easy as we wish they were, they are not. Everyone experiences stress to some degree, at some level, at some point. However, when stress becomes that truly dangerous part of your life where it’s more literally “eating” you, that’s where we need to start focusing. It is also quite common for others to alert us to our stress level, even though we may not be aware of it or may actually be in denial.

For example, I clearly remember one afternoon when I was sitting at home; years ago and my voice got louder, much louder than i normally speak, and i actually saw and felt me ​​yelling at my cat. This was so shocking and a wake up call to me that I immediately realized that I had to take action, I had to reflect and find out what exactly was going on. It may seem silly to some readers, but part of acknowledging your own level of stress, as I was able to do in this example, is really getting to know yourself and knowing a few other things, like: are you the object of your stress reaction too? the cause?

Let me share with you some thoughts, tips, and advice that have worked for many people I work with. Please note, however, that this is only a brief overview of a variety of issues that often require much more in-depth investigation from you and me.

The first step is to be able to identify some stressors (indicators of stress) and these can simply be things like muscle tension that continues for a long period of time, bad mood, constant fatigue where no stimulant can help you, feelings of forgetting simple procedures. or steps you have been doing or doing for years, getting sick all the time, falling asleep and not being aware of it, overeating or undereating, and drug use (this includes alcoholic beverages, legal and illegal drugs) to keep you going.

Once you identify that you are stressed or realize that another person you know is clearly stressed but is unaware of the danger they are in (hopefully you are the angel helping them at this point), move on to the stress management and ultimately towards removing stress from your life. Easy right? Mistaken. It’s not necessarily easy because we are often so caught up in a cycle of stress or negativity that we can’t get out and need help. But sometimes we can or do get the help we need. If you’re not sure how stressed you are, I encourage you to take some tests that address individual stress levels. I highly recommend “The Stress Reliever Personality Test” or “What is your Stress Index” from the Canadian Mental Health Association. This will help you get started.

From there, you need to identify your stressors: personal or professional. Again, I recommend working on this with a trusted person. Maybe you don’t do that in the first step, but absolutely for reflection purposes. You need to look at these two arenas and even little things like flushing or increased sweating or indigestion and such are symptoms of physical stress. Your trusted friends can point to other things, such as your sudden inability to make decisions, lack of clarity of thought, constant doubts, low productivity, etc. These may be behaviors that you haven’t really noticed because you’re naturally, for lack of a better term, caught up in them.

The biggest concern is that excessive or chronic stress has been directly linked to cardiovascular disease and depression. Both can be extremely difficult to get out of once you’ve entered the vicious cycle of unhealthy living. This can mean a heart attack in the first case or clinical depression which, if left untreated, leads to suicide in around 15% of all cases. These are proven numbers and you don’t want to be a part of any of these groups, you don’t want to get an ulcer, you don’t want to get addicted to some kind of drug (either legal or illegal) as all that happens is a constant veil of the principal cause. Which then brings us back to doing the work of identifying your stressors and your reaction. Everyone is different, so your reaction to stress may be to overeat while mine is not. This means that you need to know yourself! Again, this may sound easy, but it’s not. Most of us know the person we let the world see or the person we want to be, but truly knowing ourselves isn’t necessarily present at the beginning of this journey. However, this first stage is quick and the more you begin to know yourself, the more you begin to understand and love yourself, both of which are key components of a stress-free, healthy life.

Why is knowing yourself so important if you are trying to identify, manage, and eliminate stress? It’s crucial because if you don’t know yourself, you may be choosing a strategy that helps others, possibly thousands of other people, but that can’t work for you because it’s YOU. For some people, physical exercise is the answer to stress relief. They go to the gym or ride a bike. Others go to the shooting range. These are great options as they trigger adrenaline (one of your body’s physical reactions to stress) and therefore immediately de-stress. However, the results can only be temporary and I have seen people who have become almost obsessed with physical exercise as a way of not feeling stress, so they are really just hiding the root cause in their own way; which means that they avoid the real problem, which most of the time is based on the fear of knowing themselves.

For me, once I realized that I was so stressed that it could possibly kill me, I made a very important decision: to take the time to get to know myself or better: to get to know myself again. I would get up 30 minutes earlier every day, and I’m not a morning person, to do some light yoga and a nice cup of Café Latte. These 30 minutes proved to be my life-changer and lifesaver (besides my cat, who is the one who alerts me to my stress level, of course). I did strenuous yoga: NO. Have I always done 30 minutes?: NO. But I took these 30 minutes every morning, so I started the morning in harmony and time. Some people may call this meditation to a certain extent. From this first step I began to change my diet. This was a more subconscious change because my body suddenly didn’t crave a lot of the bad foods anymore since I was giving my body and soul enough attention every morning. Then I also began to have more time for myself; like not going through all the bills in the mail immediately after coming home, but spending time with the cat first or changing my clothes to get rid of whatever happened during the day. Then I started meditating and things naturally evolved from there. I offer this example because it highlights possible steps for you, but also because it illustrates that we all need to find our own paths, our own strategies, and if you’re not sure what might work for you, a trusted coach, counselor, or friend can help. some suggestions.

From here, you need to identify the “Ws”: when do you feel stressed? Where do you feel stressed? Why do you feel stressed? This leads to “what” causes me stress. Very often, ironically, it is you who is causing yourself stress because you are disconnected from someone else’s preferences, be it in your personal or professional life. What this means is that your preferences for handling a situation, for spending the night, for hosting a meeting can be very different based on your personality than what you are encountering. This is normal, but what you may be doing is blaming the other person or people for your preferences while they are truly out of your control. Let’s face it: we can’t change another person unless they want to and even then we can only help. So if a friend wants to watch a zombie movie and you don’t, then there doesn’t need to be any stress. Instead, you can both agree to disagree and watch a different movie, no movie, or watch the movies separately. No need to stress, but we often stress over these seemingly simple items, don’t we?

What I’m trying to get you to see here is that you won’t change your friend’s preference for a specific type of movie. You also won’t be able to change the fact that most offices and businesses open at the same time, which is probably why you find yourself stuck in traffic every morning, so all you can do is one thing: change his reaction.

In other words, when I teach stress management I refer to a seemingly simple formula:

A+B=C.

A is everything that is NOT within your power and really has no intrinsic meaning to you.

B is everything that is within your reach, such as your reaction to an event, situation or person; which means that you must first stop and think in order to be rational about the situation. This can be done by simply taking a few deep breaths; then you need to move on to controlling the internal dialogue within yourself, avoiding blaming another for your stress or discomfort (the blame game, which means you are relinquishing your power to the other person or the event) and keeping perspective of how important is this topic, what it means to you and what you can do now.

C is the consequence. Everything is in your hands: you determine your attitude and therefore your altitude.

Yes, it’s that easy and Yes, it’s that hard, but most importantly, you can angst your life, slowly and deliberately, according to who you are. This means that you are slowly turning the tide on the silent killer: stress.

I wish you the best and I know it can be done because I did it and many others do it – just remember that you may need to ask for help and that is the first sign of courage and strength on your way to determining your own stress. -Free life.

natalia forest

Super Focus Mentor

https://www.life-transforming.com

©11/2013

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