Stress is an inability to adapt to your ever-changing environment and to react to the stimuli or events around you. Distress is extreme stress, great pain, anxiety, or sorrow, acute suffering, affliction. (“Dis” meaning negative or reverse force.)
Some stress is good because:
- It gives you the opportunity to see that your perceptions and emotional reactions are unbalanced and expectations are unrealistic.
- It gets you moving toward what you want and away from what you don’t want.
Read more about emotional eating
Why is it important to manage stress?
“It is not stress that kills us but our reaction to it.” ~Hans Selye
Stress is a part of life and affects every aspect of life and can accelerate the aging process. When you learn to balance your expectations, perceptions and emotions you will live longer. When emotions move erratically up and down, the tendency toward bipolar sets in and physiology, hormones and adrenals, are affected. Your emotions electrically change your body and mind and this can be either for our benefit or not.
Signs of stress include tense muscles, unbalanced thoughts, erratic speech, shallow breathing and tight chest. Prolonged stress can result in constipation, stomach issues and high blood pressure.
How to manage stress:
I have found that I learn the most when I am stressed, as it means that I have to choose my priorities, slow down a little, listen to my body and really learn from the situation at hand.
Here are more tips for dealing with stress:
- Set balanced expectations and goals whilst allowing for flexibility.
- Prioritize your actions and what is important for you.
- Delegate low level priorities to others.
- Chunk down large projects, doing something everyday to keep up momentum, reduce procrastination, lack of clarity and frustration.
- Plan the night before for the following day and write goals down to unclutter your head.
- Congratulate yourself on what you have achieved and reflect on what you have learned.
- Take time daily to relax with meditation, inspiring texts, peaceful music or walks in nature.
- Work on reducing limiting beliefs as they affect our thoughts and actions that then creates negative emotions.
- Be passionate about what you do and establish a purpose that is larger than your immediate life.
- Take some gentle time line therapy with me, to reduce limiting beliefs and negative emotions.
- Switch from a negative emotion to a positive one by remembering a time when you felt that positive emotion. Change from fear to faith for example.
What if you learn to manage stress?
When you practice mastering stress your hormonal cortisol levels will go down and your endorphin levels with go up. You will feel fulfilled, poised and centered. This will add years to your life by slowing down the aging process.
You will then have the opportunity to develop your gifts and passions and share them with others to create a better world for all!
Image: FREDBOUAINE ?
