The first steps to begin managing stress in your life

Lately, stress seems to be becoming more and more common in people of all ages.

Although stress is very common, it’s in no way good for your health.

Long term, untreated stress can be extremely detrimental to not only your health, but also your quality of life.

That’s why even though stress is common, it’s not something that should be taken lightly or ignored.

If you find yourself feeling stressed often, it’s important to take action to minimize your stress.

It may not seem possible to eliminate stress from your life completely, but it’s certainly possible to reduce and manage your stress.

Here’s everything you need to know about the stress in your life.

The dangers of stress

Stress is a normal part of life and at times, there’s no avoiding it. Some stress is even essential for you to grow and develop.

However, if your stress becomes long lasting and your body never gets a chance to settle down, this can start becoming dangerous for your health. That’s why if you’re striving to live your healthiest and happiest life, that starts with reducing your stress.

Some of the dangerous impacts of stress are:

Anxiety

Depression

Digestive issues

Insomnia

Weight changes

Heart disease

Weakened immune system

Loss of memory

It’s important to start taking action to manage your stress early. Otherwise, it’ll start negatively impacting your health and well-being.

This isn’t something we want to happen.

How to recognize if you’re dealing with stress

In order to be able to manage your stress, you first need to determine if you’re dealing with stress. To do this, you need to be able to recognize signs of stress within yourself.

If you’re dealing with excess stress, most of the signs you’d be looking for would be in your behavior.

This is because stress most often impacts your personal well-being.

As a result, the most common signs of stress are personality and mood changes.

You might notice you’ve not been feeling like yourself lately, you’re extremely irritable, pushing people away, or find less enjoyment in your everyday life.

And for a lot of us, myself included, we might see these signs and symptoms and not know what the cause is. If you’re unaware of the signs of stress, then you most likely would never realize that stress is the culprit of these symptoms.

That’s why it’s so important to become familiar with all the most common signs of stress.

Some of the most common signs of stress are:

Easily irritable and frustrated

Loss of interest in normal activities

Headaches

Stomach problems

Crying often and sadness

Difficulty making decisions

Overworking

And appetite changes

This is just to name a few, there are many, many more signs and symptoms of stress.

Additionally, keep in mind that stress looks different on everyone.

Everyone who deals with stress will develop different symptoms and experience them to a different level.

Some people may show a lot of symptoms and other may show none at all.

Some of the best ways to begin managing your stress

Now that you know the dangers of stress and how to identify if you are stressed, let’s talk about how to start managing your stress.

In order to diminish the symptoms you’re experiencing, you need to find ways to tone down the stress in your life. By doing this, you will help protect your future self from the dangers of long term, chronic stress.

Here are some of my favorite ways to manage stress:

Learn how to let go of what’s out of your control

Many times, the biggest stressors in our lives are things that are out of our control.

No matter where your stress is coming from, it’s important to take a step back and ask yourself if it’s even something that’s in your control.

If it is, then that means that there are things you can do to change it. So, take back control and make the changes you need to make to improve your situation.

Then, there’s no reason to be stressed if it’s within your control, because if it is, then that means you can change it. Which means that whatever this stress is, it’s temporary.

However, if it’s not in your control, then what good does it really do for you to stress about it? Will it change the situation? Will it make you feel any better? The answer is probably not.

All it does is make you more miserable.

Of course, letting things go that are out of your control is way easier said than done. It’s a skill that takes time to learn and requires practice to master.

However, if you can consciously realize that somethings out of your control, you might allow yourself from that stress relief for a short amount of time. But, the more you practice bringing the lack of control to your attention, the more this short period of relief will keep increasing.

This is because most of the time your stress is a habit that you’ve subconsciously made for yourself. As a result, stressed and anxious is the first emotion your body jumps to.

If you consciously keep reminding yourself that there’s nothing you can do about your situation and therefore shouldn’t be stressed, you can break the habit.

Take care of yourself

Taking care of yourself is one of the best ways to help minimize stress in your life.

When you start caring for yourself, you start to realize that no matter what happens, you’re going to be okay.

The best way to take care of yourself is to develop daily, healthy habits.

Things like exercising regularly, drinking water, eating a balanced diet, and doing something for your mental health everyday.

Things you can do to improve your mental health can be something like a mindfulness activity or just be any activity you enjoy. For example, meditating, journaling, reading, baking or cooking, listening to music, or even watching a movie.

By doing each of these everyday, you concentrate your energy and focus into yourself, allowing yourself to flourish.

Alongside that, taking care of yourself helps boost your self confidence. It helps reassure yourself that you’re worthy, you’re capable of doing great things, and you’re capable of taking care of yourself.

When you care for yourself, it helps give you goals and something to strive for everyday. Waking up in the morning with goals to achieve helps you feel like you have a purpose.

Doing this helps tone down stress, allowing your mind to relax and not take your thoughts to an extreme.

Find a support group

I think when most people think of a support group, they think of people they can talk to about their feelings.

Yes, this is an example of a support group, however a support group can look different than that.

I know for some people, getting personal about your feelings with anyone else just isn’t an option for you. Opening up about how you’re feeling can be extremely hard, especially if that’s not something you’re used to.

As a result, a support group doesn’t need to be people you talk to about your feelings, but rather people you can spend time with.

The purpose of this is to have people who make you feel like your presence is valuable and who help take your mind off of things.

These should be people or a person you have a good, positive relationship with. Someone that you can let loose and relax around.

This might be a friend, family, or anyone you have a good relationship with. Whoever it may be, it’s important to have people in your life who make you realize that you really do have support.

Change your perspective

This may surprise you, but most of the time when we’re stressed, there’s no actual real threat. Instead, the stress usually comes from our minds convincing us that there’s a threat, and that we need to protect ourselves.

As a result, the stress we feel is greatly influenced by our perspective. Meaning that the way we perceive a situation will impact how stressed we are.

This means that two different people could be in the exact same situation. But, depending on how each one perceives the situation, they could have completely different stress responses.

An example of your perspective’s influence

To give an example, the other day one of my classes was cancelled. However, I didn’t realize it was cancelled until I woke up early, got ready, and drove all the way to school.

Instead of being happy when it was cancelled like everyone said I should be, I was so angry and stressed about all the time and energy I had wasted.

See, there were two ways for me to perceive this situation. Initially, I focused on the bad and the negatives which caused a huge stress response in my body.

Luckily, after a little more thinking, I was able to change my perspective and be grateful for the cancelation anyway.

See what I’m saying? Most of the stress we feel on a daily basis is all about our perspective in life.

One person could loose their keys and become extremely anxious over the “time and energy wasted” looking for them. Whereas another person could loose their keys, find them, and go about their day feeling no stress at all.

It’s possible to go through life and have an extreme stress response to every little situation or inconvenience. However, long term and short term, this is extremely unhealthy.

Instead, it’s extremely important to take the time to change your perspective during stressful situations.

Pause before reacting to a situation

In order to help change your perspective on a situation, it’s important to pause before you react. Take the time to stop and think before inflicting unnecessary stress upon yourself.

Ask yourself is there any real harm here? Is this really a huge deal, before I overreact? What are the positives of the situation?

By retraining your way of thinking and taking the time to pause before you react to a situation, you can eliminate unnecessary stress.

Overtime, you’ll notice that your first response to every situation won’t necessarily be to put yourself under stress.

Of course, this is way easier said than done and will take a lot of time to retrain your brain. But with practice and reinforcement, it’s entirely possible to rewire your way of thinking and reduce stress.

Takeaways

Nowadays, chronic stress is more common than ever. However, this can become extremely detrimental to your long term health and quality of life.

That’s why it’s so important to become aware of the biggest symptoms of constant stress, as well as how to reduce stress in your life.

By taking the time to retrain your brain, you have the potential to improve your quality of life tremendously.

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