Decreasing Stress — It’s Not Always About Baths & Candles (although those are nice too)
If this is your first time reading one of my posts, thank you. Let me start off by telling you a little bit about myself. My name is Eva and I’m the founder of Your Nourishing Self. I taught kindergarten for 20 years before becoming a Health Coach. Now, I enjoy helping busy professional ladies reduce their stress and overwhelm so that you no longer have to suffer from debilitating fatigue or out-of-control cravings. There’s just no reason you should have to struggle with that.
Also, I encourage you to share this post with your good friends. That’s what good friends do right? Share?
This post is about decreasing stress. I’m going to share with you some specific strategies for reducing or coping with potentially stressful events that come up in daily life.
Because really, the question isn’t IF a stressful circumstance comes up but rather WHEN. And, it’s empowering to have strategies at the ready.
There’s nothing really wrong about stress in itself. It’s what gets you out of the way of an oncoming car. It’s even what gets you out of bed in the morning. What IS important though, is HOW we deal with stress.
Let me just set the stage for these strategies — they’re not going to include warm baths nor candles. Not this time anyway!
Now, we all get stressed, myself included. Stressful events will just happen right? It’s a part of daily life. However, having some strategies available in order to empower us to handle the stress effectively is so beneficial and important to our overall health.
Getting a handle on stress with various techniques will help to manage the possible symptoms and side effects of stress such as those ever-powerful cravings.
The strategies I’m about to share have helped me as well as my clients deal with those intensely stressful events as well as the resulting quest for comfort by way of cravings.
Feel free to try any of these and remember, you won’t hurt my feelings if a particular strategy doesn’t quite work out for you. That’s totally ok. Just choose the one(s) that work for you. That’s really what I’m here for today, to increase your menu of stress management techniques.
Let’s get started shall we?
So, have you noticed that when your stress level increases, your pace also increases? For example, you start trying to do more and faster? This feeds the drive to keep pushing through and keep going right?
Well, take a couple of minutes, you can even set your phone alarm for 2 to 3 minutes, close your eyes and tune in to the sensations that you are feeling.
Scan your body to really notice which areas are tense? Where are you holding the tension? Are you clenching your teeth? Are your shoulders tight? Are they scrunched up to your ears?
Consciously slow your breath down.
Place your hands on your belly so that you can feel the rise and fall of your belly as you take deep belly breaths instead of shallow chest breaths.
Repeat this until you hear the alarm.
Another tip to decrease your stress response, is to sip on some warm tea. Warm drinks just seem to to naturally slow us down. Have you ever tried to drink a warm beverage quickly?
Another tip is to have a positive mindset. I know, it can be challenging to have a positive mindset when you’ve got a ton of things that need your attention and they all need it right NOW!
Speaking of attention, try making the list of things that need your attention more manageable by prioritizing them into smaller chunks or tasks.
Along the lines of mindset, try getting a new/different perspective. You can do this by literally taking a step back, or by going outside. Go outside for 10 minutes. The change of scenery might be just what you need to get past the slump.
Sometimes, stress may be self-induced by the pressures and/or expectations we may place on ourselves. For example, are you comparing yourself to others who may seem to have it better or easier than you?
Still along the lines of mindset and of getting a different perspective, how about our perception of how much time we have. Let me explain, sometimes, letting someone else go in front of us in line or go ahead of us on the road, gives us the practice that we need to be more patient. We’ll learn patience with ourselves AND patience with others and THAT may in turn give us the perception of having more time. Interesting right?