What is stress?
Everyone talks about it. But what is it really? The scientific explanation would be between the fight or flight and rest and digest components of the nervous system. If someone is under stress they will often feel pressure or tension somewhere or everywhere in their bodies. The opposite of stress would be to feel calm and at peace.
What I do know is that when I speak to people, they know when they are stressed. However, when I ask them what is stressing them out, oftentimes most people do not specifically know.
How can you help reduce your stress or manage it, if you do not know what is stressing you out?
In our over stimulated society, it is a go-go-go-go keep-going kind of culture. Where is the balance, the break for our systems to de-stress? Think of your body like as if it were a car. If it keeps going and going and going and does not get in for a maintenance check, what is going to happen to it?
That is right. It is going to breakdown somewhere. So, the most important thing to do is take care of your health. Easier said than done however.
A quote from Virgil comes to mind in this moment. “The greatest wealth is health.”
So what can you do to help manage or reduce your stress?
Here are five suggestions to begin your journey.
Try them and see what works best for you. If you have not done them before, give yourself time to instill the new habit. According to science (Lally’s study), that can take as little as 18 days or up to 254 days.
- Meditation
- Meditation is one way to calm your mind from its incessant chatter. The idea of meditation is to focus on one particular thing in that moment, to sense and feel without interpretation or judgment.
- If you are new to meditation, there are many places to start learning. A simple Google search will lead you wherever you want to learn.
- Journaling
- Journaling is beneficial for a lot of things. Some ways it can help you include organizing your thoughts, writing better, becoming more creative, recording your ideas and helping you relieve stress.
- Start journaling every day. Begin with a few minutes and see what ideas and thoughts come to your mind. Whether you think they are good or bad does not matter, write it down and see where it takes you.
- Regular Exercise
- I cannot ‘stress’ the importance of exercise (don’t mind me, just trying to be punny.). Exercise has a list of benefits of which one of them is helping to manage and relieve stress.
- Exercising in the morning has some great benefits including decreasing cortisol (the stress hormone) and increasing dopamine (emotional responses) and serotonin (well-being or the happy hormone).
- Hydration
- Our bodies are mostly water. It is imperative to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated and keep your body operating well.
- Being well hydrated is part of staying healthy. And if you are taking better care of your body, you will feel better and have more ‘drive’ to meditate, journal and exercise.
- Social Network
- Get rid of the ‘energy vampires’ in your life. Or drastically reduce your time with them.
- They say you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. Who are you spending time with? Do you feel energized when you see them, or dreading seeing them and know you will be exhausted after?
- Spending time with the people you love and cherish is important to a person’s well-being. Being human is a very social and community oriented existence. We want to belong to a group and feel loved and appreciated. Having a strong and supportive social network will help you in times of stress because you have people you can rely on and trust.
“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” – Joan Borysenko
