Do you wish to live a stress-free life forever? We all wish our lives to be free of stress, right? Actually, moderate stress is good for you because it helps you to motivate yourself to complete your goals. However, too much stress could be harmful to your health and your overall well-being. But when it comes down to it, I think that it is how we work or even relax, for that matter that triggers stress. Ever been stressed even when you’re well relaxed and bored? If you have, continue to read this article.
Since stress is unavoidable in life, it is important to find ways to decrease and prevent stressful incidents and decrease negative reactions to stress. Here are some of the things that can be done by just remembering to practice it because life is basically a routine to follow like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast. You can do a few of them in a longer span of time, but as they say– every step counts.
Managing time
Time is so valuable in our life. Time management skills can allow you more time with your family and friends and possibly increase your performance and productivity. This will help reduce your stress.
To improve your time management:
· Save time by focusing and concentrating, delegating, and scheduling time for yourself daily.
· Keep a record of how you spend your time, including work, family, healthy lifestyles, and leisure time.
· Prioritize your time by rating tasks by importance and urgency. Redirect your time to those activities that are important and meaningful to you.
· Manage your commitments by not over- or under-committing. Don’t commit to what is not important to you.
· Deal with procrastination by using a day planner, breaking large projects into smaller ones, and setting short-term deadlines.
· Examine your beliefs to reduce conflict between what you believe and what your life is like.
Build healthy coping strategies
It is important that you identify your coping strategies. One way to do this is by recording the stressful event, your reaction, and how you cope in a stress journal. I recommend this practice to my clients because it helps them greatly. With this information, you can work to change or replace unhealthy coping strategies into healthy ones-those that help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life.
Lifestyle
Some behaviors and lifestyle choices affect your stress level tremendously. They may not cause stress directly, but they can interfere with the ways your body seeks relief from stress. Try to:
· Balance personal, work, and family needs and obligations.
· Have a sense of purpose in life.
· Get enough sleep since your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you are sleeping.
· Eat a balanced diet for a nutritional defense against stress.
· Get moderate exercise throughout the week; at least three times a week.
· Limit your consumption of alcohol, seriously.
· Don’t smoke.
Social support
It’s important to know that social support is a major factor in how we experience stress. Social support is the positive support you receive from family, friends, mentors, coaches, and the community. It is the knowledge that you are cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued. Additionally, more and more research indicates a strong relationship between social support and better mental and physical health.
Changing thinking
As you’ve known, when an event triggers negative thoughts, you may experience fear, insecurity, anxiety, depression, rage, guilt, and a sense of worthlessness or powerlessness. These emotions trigger the body’s stress, just as an actual threat does. Dealing with your negative thoughts and how you see things can help reduce stress.
1. Thought-stopping helps you stop a negative thought to help eliminate stress.
2. Get out of your distortion thinking by disproving irrational thoughts; it helps you to avoid exaggerating the negative thought, anticipating the worst, and interpreting an event incorrectly.
3. Problem-solving helps you identify all aspects of a stressful event and find ways to deal with it.
4. In my private practice, I’ve found that changing your communication style helps you communicate in a way that makes your views known without making others feel put down, hostile, or intimidated. This reduces the stress that comes from poor communication. Use the assertiveness ladder to improve your communication style moving forward.
Whether you’re the student, the professional, the CEO, or probably the average working parent, stress is one unwanted visitor you would love to boot out of your homes, especially your life. Contact us at https://www.CatholicExecutiveCoach.com to learn more about how to manage your stress and live a healthier life.
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