Stress is defined as your body’s reaction to pressure from the event or situation it is in. Forms of stress can be a helpful way to make you more aware of your surroundings and keep your focus up, however, too much stress can quickly become harmful mentally, physically, and emotionally. An overexposure to stress can lead to muscle pain, headaches, anxiety, muscle aches, trouble sleeping, digestive issues, drop in sex drive, depression, irritability, lethargy, and even high blood pressure.
Attaining a healthy life is more than just physical fitness, it starts from within, and reducing stress is a great way to facilitate a healthy lifestyle.
Here are some helpful tips to help manage stress in your life:
Identify The Source
Identifying the origin of your stress is the first step in understanding why you feel the way you do. Once you know the source of your stress you can then take steps to change your stressful situation. Avoiding the source of that stress is one way, and another is to tweak the way you interact with the source of your stress.
Balance
Understanding that you are just one person and you alone cannot do everything perfectly will help you reduce some forms of stress. At times you may overload your list of responsibilities, whether voluntarily or not, and it puts a heavy sense of crisis due to feelings like a shortage of time or being overwhelmed with an excessive workload. Learning to balance your list of responsibilities and accepting you cannot do everything perfectly nor in a short amount of time, will greatly limit the stress you deal with.
Rely On Friends And Family
Once you have come to accept that you alone cannot take on everything alone, it is then important to seek out help from the people close to you. Whenever possible, take advantage of the available help around you. This will not only limit the stress due to the drop in responsibility, it will also help build the relationship between you and the people around you.
Make Time For Yourself
Making time for yourself does not mean you have to be alone. To make time for yourself is to do activities you love and activities that help you relax and take your mind off the stress. This can also include hanging out with your friends, coworkers, or family. If what makes you find peace is an activity such as reading or even sleeping, make time for it. Balance is the key to stress management.
Give Meditation A Try
Meditation can help with relaxing the mind and body, reducing the stress you face on a daily basis. Research into meditation has demonstrated that meditating for a short time increases alpha waves, which makes us feel more relaxed, while simultaneously decreasing our feelings of anxiety and depression. Alpha waves flow through cells in the brain’s cortex, where we process sensory information. These waves help suppress irrelevant or distracting sensory information, allowing us to focus. The more alpha waves we have, the better we focus (Loker, 2012). Relaxation techniques are not just limited to meditation, activities such as yoga can also help in greatly reducing the stress you face.
Stress can be a killer both figuratively and literally, and the quicker you take action to manage or reduce it, the easier and healthier your life will be.
Health Life Fitness 