Who isn’t stressed? At least a little? Everyone gets stressed, however, it is how you deal with stress that is the key. We all have stress, but some stress is bad and just hangs on inside our minds and bodies in a negative way, and some stress is good, happy stress, which also can hang on in our body, but is not necessarily damaging stress.
In today’s life, we have so much more stress, negative stress. It’s how we look at it and try to make something positive out of it. It can be done. According to Ouraring.com, “The reality is that stress materializes as both emotional and physiological symptoms – your brain and body are inseparable.” When you are stressed, your body is in fight-or-flight mode and keeps running away from the lion, which causes increased heart and respiratory rate, and your stress hormones start working overtime. This is what causes illness, holding onto that fight-or-flight response and not calming it down. Ouraring.com also states you don’t want your flight-or-flight response on all the time, but you also don’t want it inactive.
3 Tips to Manage Stress:
- Become more self-aware. I go over this a lot in my online program, “Self-Care for Women 50+” and have an audio, “A Self-Awareness” exercise, by Dr. Frank Kinslow. It is wonderful. It teaches you how to just sit and become aware of awareness; self-awareness. Very relaxing and the more you do it, the more aware you are of being aware; being mindful of yourself and your surroundings. Becoming self-aware helps to “reset imbalances when you sense them and may even improve your sleep.”
2. Exercise and nutrition: I’m putting these two together, because to me, they just go hand-in-hand. So, exercise, even if it’s a 10-15 minute walk once or twice a day, doing stretches once or twice daily, even 20 sit-to-stands, where you just keep sitting and standing, barely hitting your bottom on the chair, hands either crossed over your chest or out in front of you (if you have a difficult time doing this one, push up from the chair, giving you some support). As always, get your doctor’s approval before starting any exercise program. Start small and go bigger as you feel stronger. Push a little every day and you will reap it’s rewards. And, as I said, nutrition goes hand-in-hand with exercise. Eat healthy and learn. And, drink plenty of water.
3. Meditation. you can become more aware by just sitting in quiet, taking a deep belly breath in and focus on your heart. Breathe in and out from your heart, and be still. You may even get to the core of your stressors and why you react the way you do with certain ones. There are many different ways to meditate (also gone over in my Self-Care program). It’s finding which resonates with you. I love breathing from my heart. It allows me to focus on my breathing, allowing thoughts to come and go swiftly and to really feel and become aware of “me.” Then, I end up really feeling what I am feeling, allowing it, loving myself. Then, I can ask God/Universe/whatever or whoever your higher-being is, questions I want answers to. Sitting quietly, breathing slowly and focusing on breathing from my heart allows me to just release all stress and just kind of recalibrate my system, allowing you to rebalance.
So there you go. My 3 favorite tips to cope with stress. There are many ways, including participating in an activity that allows you to relax. For example, I crochet. It instantly calms me, allowing me to be creative and just focus on the present…what I am creating. Just like what I do when I meditate…clearing my mind to be able to co-create my life in a meaningful way to me.
I hope this resonates with you. Let us know. 