The human body is designed to respond to stressful events. During these situations, your body will exhibit its “flight or fight” response system to deal with triggers that may cause your stress. However, it’s extremely unhealthy to remain stressed throughout the day.
In fact, constantly lingering stress can cause a barrage of negative mental and physical health effects. To relieve the stress in your life and put your body at ease, here are 10 practical ways to defeat stress in your life.
1. Identifying Stress Triggers
Stress is a normal reaction for people who are simply carrying out ordinary daily routines. However, stress can negatively impact a person’s health if this reaction is kept under control. Although stress will likely never go away, there is an effective method of maintaining it.
This method entails identifying the stress triggers in your life. To begin, start by looking at the different areas of your life, such as personal relationships, work, finances, and bills. Are there any stressful people or activities that you can avoid? What can you do to maintain the stress in these areas?
These are essential questions you’ll have to ask yourself if you want to reduce your stress, primarily because these areas play integral roles in your daily life.
2.Exercise
Not only is exercising a great way to stay in shape, keeping your body healthy and fit can relieve exorbitant amounts of stress. Maintaining a regular exercising regimen can promote weight loss, increase your mood, and help you sleep well at night.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that adults should exercise for 150 minutes every week. However, if you are just getting into the habit of working out, try breaking your regimen into 30-minute workout sessions.
3. Cry Often
Keeping your emotions built up inside for extended lengths of time can be overwhelming. According to a research report published by Motivation and Emotion, people who cried before watching a film reportedly felt worse immediately after the movie ended. However, in 90 minutes, they felt better than they did before the film began.
Crying is an effective way of releasing pent-up stress, and it’s also a viable method of releasing endorphins which helps your body improve your mood.
4. Realize Your Flaws
It’s healthy and perfectly human to set goals for yourself. However, you should also realize your limits and your flaws. Generally speaking, no one is perfect. Therefore, holding yourself to unrealistic expectations can elicit unnecessary feelings of stress.
Try to understand that perfection doesn’t exist and let go of your desire to achieve these unattainable goals. Commit yourself to establish challenging yet fathomable goals and accepting your flaws. If you do, your body and mind will be grateful that you did.
5. Schedule Separate Time for Yourself
Human beings, especially adults, generally deal with a load of stressful activities every day. Most people have to focus on paying bills, establishing an orderly household, taking care of children, and so on. The fact of the matter is that you may not have the energy to do any of these tasks if you don’t schedule your “me time” every so often.
Whether you spend five minutes to meditate to yourself, read a book, or take a hot bath, penciling in separate time for yourself can help you relax and restore lost energy you spend on other vital tasks.
6. Do Something Healthy Every day
Take the stairs at work. Enjoy a bottle of water instead of a soda. Even if your schedule gets busy, take the time to do something healthy every day. Participating in these subtle activities may convince you to partake in more strenuous physical activities.
Overall, prioritizing your health can make a great impact in your life and help you relieve excess amounts of stress.
7. Stay Prepared
In life, unwanted circumstances and unforeseen situations occur. Your car may break down from on your way home. You may break your key entering your home one day. While unfortunate events are certainly inevitable in life, you can still make certain preparations to ease the burden of these events.
Begin a savings account. Create spare keys to your home. Invest in a new vehicle. Before you are hit with a crisis, make sure you are properly prepared so you don’t overreact when it eventually happens.
8. Keep a Journal
It has been medically proven that jotting down your thoughts in a journal relieves stress and makes you feel empowered. By simply recording your experiences in your journal, you may be able to move on from a plethora of emotions such as sadness, anger, and personal loss.
Though, rather than venting about your feelings in your journey, try to learn from your experiences and ask yourself how have you changed after a difficult situation.
9. Stay Hydrated
The key to effective stress management lies in your daily hydration intake. Staying hydrated is essential to healthy and combatting fatigue. If you’re feeling less lethargic, you could be more productive and relaxed in your daily routine.
According to the Mayo Clinic, adults should aim to drink 13 cups of fluids each day. Specifically, men should strive to consume 3 liters, while women should drink 2.2 liters per day.
10. Balance Your Workload
At work, it may be natural to say “yes” to every project or assignment. However, piling to much work on your plate could have disastrous consequences. Maintaining a balanced workload is essential to prioritizing your time and your health.
Therefore, consider each assignment before agreeing to work on it carefully. Be careful to only accept assignments that you are confident you can handle without any stress. This is important towards keeping your mental health in supreme standing.
If your stress is interfering with your ability to live your daily life and is causing complications such as alcoholism or depression, please speak to your doctor immediately to help you take control of your life.
