10 Powerful Tips to Help Manage Everyday Stress

For many, the holiday season can often be a stressful time. Stress in small amounts can be a good thing as it motivates us to perform well. However, if we have many daily challenges such as deadlines, paying bills, family matters and not knowing what to buy everyone for Christmas, it can easily push us beyond our limits. No matter what causes you stress, it’s helpful to prioritise your time, commitments, and family activities, all of which help contribute to stress reduction.

Tips for Managing Stress

Stress Releasing Tip #1 
Identify the sources of stress in your life right now. Try to identify your true sources of stress. Look at your habits, attitude, and excuses. What is the source of your stress? Is it others’ expectations of you? Or could it be your own expectations of how things should be? Or is it perhaps your own expectations on how you should be and how you should be performing right now? What tasks have you voluntarily or not so voluntarily taken on?

Stress Releasing Tip #2 
Replace unhealthy coping strategies with healthy ones. If your methods of coping with stress are not contributing to your greater emotional and physical health, it is time to find healthier ones. Focus on what makes you feel calm and in control.
Practice deep breathing. Stopping and taking a few deep breaths can immediately ease pressure. Find your inner quiet place. Go deep inside to a place where you feel that you are at peace and then just relax and breathe in deeply and enjoy the feeling of being at one and at peace within yourself.

Stress Releasing Tip #3
Let’s do a brief visualisation exercise. Imagine you are holding 5 –10 balloons in your hand, each with a piece of string attached. Insert one thought that is causing you stress right now into one balloon. It could be a belief about something you feel you should/must do, and that is causing you to feel stressed. When you feel ready, let go of that balloon, see it float away and gain height in the blue sky, and become smaller and smaller. Continue then with the next thought and balloon. Let go of any problem or worry for the moment, and see, feel, and sense them floating away and disappear. Don’t worry, you can deal with whatever you put inside of them later. But in this moment, release every thought from yesterday, today, or tomorrow and be mindful of the now…. this breath...this moment. Ground yourself in this very moment.

Stress Releasing Tip #4
Think of a soothing action, such as rocking a baby in your arms, raking leaves in a garden, or taking a leisurely stroll in a favourite spot in nature. Notice the details. Use all your senses in this exercise. Feel the weight of the baby in your arms. The sweet scent of its scalp. The whirls of the fine hair on its head. Notice the way your arms feel as they rake the leaves. How your hands feel inside the protecting gloves. The sound the rake makes on the ground. The smell of the slightly damp leaves and the scent of autumn in the air. Notice the familiar, calming view on your imaginary walk. The sound your shoes make on the gravel. The slight breeze on your face. The sounds. The smells. Take a few deep breaths and feel your shoulders release tension and lower themselves.

Stress Releasing Tip #5
Eat well. Limit the amount of salt, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol in your diet. Eating a regular, well-balanced diet will help you feel better and help control moods. Stress is also easily brought on by not hydrating properly. Drink plenty of clean, pure water each day.

Stress Releasing Tip #6
Move your body. When you’re stressed, the last thing you probably feel like doing is getting up and exercising, but physical activity is a huge stress reliever. Try to do at least moderate exercise each day. This will breathe new life into your skin, hair and will nourish all your vital organs. Exercise releases endorphins that make you feel good. It can also serve as a valuable distraction from your daily worries.

Stress Releasing Tip #7

Make time every day for things you enjoy. Try to do something every day that makes you feel good. It could be hobbies. Or put on some music and dance. Or do something that makes you laugh. Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles and stimulates circulation and aids muscle relaxation, both of which help reduce the physical symptoms of stress.
 

Stress Releasing Tip #8 
Slow Down. Modern life is so busy, and sometimes we just need to slow down. Look at your life and find small ways you can do that. Unplug yourself from your electronic devices. Silence notices. Make yourself unavailable for a short time. Call it Me Time.

Stress Releasing Tip #9
Go analogue and connect to others in real life. Spend some quality time with another human being who makes you feel safe and understood.

Stress Releasing Tip #10
Get outside. Nature has a healing impact on our overall wellbeing. It soothes and restores us, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension and the production of stress hormones. Sometimes the simple change of scenery will also allow you to change your perspective.

Photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash