What is stress?
Well stress is a normal reaction to everyday external pressures, it can become unhealthy when it upsets your day-to-day functioning, but normal stress is just that…normal. Allowing your stress to feel overwhelming requires an appraisal of “is this stress or anxiety”.
Anxiety on the other hand can occur with or without an external stressor and consists of worry and fear around an actual stressor, potential stressor or an imagined stressor.
In easy terms stress is “I have to get dinner done by 6 p.m.” this is a set deadline that creates a call to action to work towards an outcome, by contrast anxiety in this situation might look something like “I could probably cook dinner, but what if I burn it and ruin the whole thing, what if I add too much flower, what if no one likes it”. So even with an actual external trigger our minds can then run away with it.
For today lest focus on controlling our emotional and physical response to stress before the anxiety hits. How do we calm down when the chores of daily living hit hard, our bosses are being demanding or the bills seem to be piling up?
12 Easy tips to control your stress today.
- Stretch for 10 min (don’t know how, find a video online!)
- Take a walk, 10 min outside at a minimum, if you have the time, go for 20 min
- Tense the muscles in your body. This sounds weird but simply where you are now start with your legs, work your way to each muscle group and tense them up one at a time. Continue until you have hit each muscle area, try to hold each tense/flex for 3-5 seconds (watch for cramps!)
- Do breathing exercises, there are numerous variations and tutorials on the ol’ world wide web. I recommend box breathing for beginners. If breathing becomes a way to destress there are more advance techniques like Wim Hof method
- Check on a loved one, focus on not venting but thinking about something other than your stress in this conversation
- Reach for your spiritual center, regardless of your faith, retreating to this area of our lives for only a few minutes can immediately reduce stress
- Make a plan with a friends or family member to do something positive after the external stressor is removed, this adds an air of hope around this daunting task to get excited about finishing
- Try meditating, there are several options for this. I recommend scrolling YouTube for a beginner tutorial video
- Write a plan of action. For some people planning out the attack strategy for a problem is more helpful than stepping away, it helps to streamline the process into bites
- Give yourself a good rub down, start with a gentle massage to your calves, thighs, hands forearms upper arms and then your neck to focus your thinking somewhere else for just a moment.
- Find a few songs that “do it for you!” and have them at the ready to just take your mind away and give yourself that moment of happiness that only that perfect song or set of songs can do.
- Lastly, this is the big one, use the power of your thoughts to remember this is likely not the end of the world, if you don’t get this done, don’t get this perfect it’s ok.
