Easy & Effective Ways To Stress Less
If you find yourself experiencing any of the following things at work, don’t worry! We’ve got the solution for you. Your coping skills can be improved.
- Inability to meet deadlines
- Difficulty in Sleeping
- Feelings of anxiety and pressure
- Not having healthy food or overeating
- Increased alcohol, drug use or smoking
- Increase in illness
The below-mentioned points can help you in dealing with stress at work more efficiently.
1. Know Your stressors
If you take additional responsibilities than what you manage at work? In that situation, you must consider setting boundaries as well as learn to say “no”. By lessening the number of responsibilities that you’re undertaking, you can easily and efficiently fulfill the rest of your obligations and actually have enjoy the entire process. To avoid stress at work start by having a periodic journal and tracking your daily activities. You’ll be surprised to know the amount of time you’re spending doing tasks that are not adding any positive value or meaning to your life.
2. Set Up A Plan
After recognizing the activities that make up your routine life, assess them by asking few questions with yourself: Is this satisfying for you? Is it adding happiness to your life? Is it really important? The answers that you get from these questions will help you rethink and reprioritize the activities as well as habits that shape your psychological and physical health. Reprioritizing will help you recognize ways by which you can be kind to yourself by spending time enjoying activities that make you happy and add value to your life.
3. Building Connections
This is particularly important when you notice that you’re running out of support to cope. Social connections are really important for our peace and mental health. When we’re occupied, we tend to ignore time spent with friends and family, which results in the compilation of stress and adds isolation to our lives. Spending few good moments with friends and family friends one of the ways we can invest in caring for ourselves. They always want the best for us and sometimes having someone to talk who really cares about you is more than enough.
4. Meditate
It has been scientifically proved that meditation has the power to alter the brain by increasing the level of gray matter in areas connected with emotional responses. Also, it diminishes activity in the amygdala, the almond-shaped mass of nuclei associated with autonomic fear responses and emotional responses.
5. Regular Exercise
Exercise releases the feel-good hormone, endorphin and increases the growth of new brain cells. Try to fit in at least a hundred and fifty minutes of mild to moderately-intense exercises for a week. You can make it more fun by mixing different exercise styles or working out with your partner or friends.
6. Social Support
Research methodology using brain scans indicate that emotional pain is manifested as physical pain too. Social support helps to slow this circuitry down a lot. This is probably why you instantly feel better after sharing your feelings and thoughts with friends.
7. Re-label A Negative Experience
Say you leave your headphones in the car when you go to the gym. Interpret the return trip to the car not as a nuisance but as a chance to warm up before you even get on the treadmill.
8. Give To Someone Else
Studies show that doing something nice for others can make you calmer and happier.
9. List Doable Goals
Make a list of goals for the entire week and aim to achieve one every day This helps you to keep account of achievements.
Building Simple Habits To Relieve Stress
In our lives, we all have at some point or the other experienced that feeling of excessive pressure called stress. It generally happens when you’re stuck in traffic and are already running late to work or when you’re juggling too many requests on your time or trying to deal with both work or family problems – or unfortunately all of these. At some point, stress can be energizing as it can give you an extra force to meet a challenge or a deadline. But too much ongoing stress can leave you feeling burnt out, ultimately affecting both your emotional and physical health. So, to help you deal with this we’ve come up with simple habits that can help you relieve stress.
Techniques To Cope With Stress
Time and again, numerous studies have proven how exercise is one the best ways to bust stress. Stress causes the human body to go into a fight-or-flight response that sends the body into high charge mode causing it to be filled with a lot of nervous energy and a sudden flood of hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. Nervous energy is excess energy generated as a result of stress. But in physiological terms, energy only points to one thing- a sugar (glucose) rush. Nervous energy has to be dissipated quickly or else can be very dangerous.
Exercise combined with a few other techniques is the best way to rid the body of this excess energy. So the next time you are stressed out, try the following:
1. Deep Breathing
Cross your legs and sit upright. Draw in slow, deep breaths from the diaphragm. Exhale slowly and relax your chest and shoulders. Deep breathing enables efficient exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. If you are going through extreme stress, try breathing deeply by lying on your back.
2. Body-Focus Breathing: This type of deep breathing is bound to take you to a higher level of consciousness. Close your eyes and take in a deep breath and sense the environment around you. Relax your body and imagine that all the negativity is flowing out of you when you exhale and good energy is flowing in when you inhale.
3. Yoga & Stretches: Yoga poses and general stretching can relieve tension from muscles and make the body more flexible. The release of tension from muscles can bring about a feeling of relaxation.
4. Meditation & Imagery Techniques: Sit in a comfortable, noiseless environment, close your eyes and free your mind from all the events of the day. Detach yourself from the surroundings and make your mind a blank space. If this seems hard, try attaching an image to the stress in your head. Imagine your stress to be like a giant ball. Now focus on the ball and imagine it shrinking slowly.
5. Progressive Muscle-Relaxation Techniques: This technique involves progressively tensing and relaxing each muscle group. For instance, close your fist and hold it tight for 5 seconds. Feel the tension inside? Now relax your hand and imagine the tension slipping away. Do the same with your other fist and gradually progress upwards exercising each body part.
6. Head & Neck Massage: You can do this yourself or ask someone to do it for you. Start at your temples and forehead and using your fingers, make gentle rubbing motions on your forehead. Do this for some time and progress gradually to the head, neck, eyelids, and under chin areas.
Be consistent with these exercises and feel the stress melt away. Truworth Wellness also offers guided programs for stress management that helps the employees develop a stress-free lifestyle.