Stress Management By Garrett Davis

Skills in stress management are vitally important to living a healthy life style. The terrible effects of stress on the human body are becoming more and more apparent to researchers with every passing year. We live in a society ripe with stimuli that often leads the individual to prolonged exposure to stress, and ultimately compromised health. So, it becomes very important that we practice stress management as a way of life.

The first thing to know about reducing stress is that it is something that takes practice. Just like most other endeavors, stress management is something that you can get better at in time. Knowing that successfully regulating and reducing your levels of stress is in fact a skill that you can acquire is imperative because this realization takes you out of the mind frame of just allowing yourself to be victimized by the effects of stress. You first need to acknowledge that stress management is something that you can master, and that you don’t have to just allow yourself to be ravaged by stress when it occurs. There is no reason to feel helpless about the stress in your life. If you’ve found yourself feeling stressed out for prolonged periods of time, it simply means that you’ve been lacking the proper stress management skills and that you need to improve upon this aspect of your life. Just like taking up a sport or a hobby, you will get better at it with time, patience, and practice.

To become successful in managing the stress in our lives, we will need a complete paradigm shift in how we think about stress itself. Stress is commonly thought of as something that happens to us. We say things like, "Oh man, I was just in the biggest traffic jam, and it stressed me out so much". Or, "Joe down at the office has been stressing me out so much lately". We say these things as if the traffic jam itself, or Joe at the office, or the demanding customer, or whatever, actually have stress that they can hurl at us with perfect aim, hitting us with every throw, covering us from head to toe and doing so with such precision that we are allowed no means of escape.

We act like victims. Victims of this thing called stress.

If you are to successfully manage the stress in your life, you must realize that stress is not something that happens to you. Stress describes your reaction to circumstance. You are the one creating the stress. It takes your mind and your body to generate stress within you. Nobody can do it for you.

Stress is not something that actually exists in the universe outside of your own experience of it. You can not go onto a jammed up freeway, or a busy office, or a crowded airport and actually capture rogue stress particles. They can not be bottled up, examined and experimented on. You cannot find out what it looks like, how much it weighs, or what color it is. No matter how hard you try, you could never actually find stress out in the environment. It is something that exists only as you create it for yourself.

To better understand this concept on a deeper level, go out into nature and contemplate what is around you. Do the trees in a forest stress themselves out over growing leaves and producing seeds? Does the soil find itself totally wiped out at the end of the day from performing all of its soil duties? Does the pear complain to the apple that the banana really stressed it out? Of coarse not! All of that seems silly because it is! The point is that stress is not something that actually exists in nature. It only exists when you choose it to exist.

So how do you go about not creating stress? The key lies in knowing that you can choose peace. When you find yourself in a situation that you know has the potential to provoke a stressful reaction within you, practice stopping in that moment, and mentally saying to yourself, "I can choose peace". Just doing that one exercise will improve your stress management skills magnificently. Try it and you will see. Say it right now to yourself, "I can choose peace". Notice the calming affect that it has on your mind and body.

Now try saying those words again to yourself, but this time with deep, slow breaths. Keep those four words handy with you at all times, and use them freely as needed. If you aren’t fully satisfied, I won’t charge you a dime. Simply return them for a full refund, minus shipping and handling.

...Which leads me to my next point: Humor is key in managing stress. Laughter does wonders in rejuvenating the mind and body after stressful situations. So go ahead and TiVo your favorite comedy show to have it on hand to watch after you’ve found yourself particularly stressed. In doing so you’ll also be practicing good time management skills because you’ll be able to skip the time wasting commercials. Or better yet, find a way to make a joke in a stressful situation. A good joke can change your mood instantaniously. Notice how when someone makes you laugh you feel immediately different, in a wonderful way. Sometimes the funniest jokes can be your own! Humor really works wonders.

Another key to stress management is to consider stress in terms of the total, cumulative amount of it in your life. When you start thinking of stress in terms of something that has a running tally of sorts, you will be able to better appreciate small reductions. For example, if you can do something to reduce your levels of stress for say, the next 5 minutes, then you will have reduced the cumulative amount of stress that you would have experienced. Thinking of stress in this way will encourage you to take baby steps. Rather than feeling helpless and simply capitulating to the pressure, you will be able to find new ways to manage your stress in small increments.

Exercise is great in this regard. It is indispensable in managing stress. When you’re in the middle of a very difficult set of squats, I can guarantee you’re not in that moment thinking about what happened at work that day, or your bills, or your kids, or whatever else. Exercise is a master at getting your mind off of what is troubling you while at the same time releasing those chemicals within the body that make you feel terrific. Sometimes when you find yourself feeling like exercising the least is when it’s most important to exercise. Not only will good exercise make you feel better while you are doing it, but that feeling will likely spill over well into the time after your workout.

Reducing your levels of stress is something that is totally within your means, provided you take the right approach. Take responsibility for your own stress, and follow what I’ve told you. In doing so you’ll be well on your way to a happier, healthier, richer experience of life.

Sign up for the free Guidance for the Motivated newsletter. If you enjoy the free information on this site, you're sure to enjoy the free newsletter. I won’t share your email address, and you can easily unsubscribe at any time. The newsletter goes out about once a week.                       

Sign up here:

If you prefer to keep up with all the latest from Guidance For The Motivated using a RSS feed, you may do so by clicking here.   

Related Articles:

- Happiness and Consciousness

- Expanding Thoughts

- 7 Lessons From Heraclitus

- How To Build Excellent Self-Control

- How To Build Discipline

Print This Page