stress management tips

How does your behavior contribute to your stress? Some people find it hard to say no to any requests made on their time. But saying yes to everything comes at a price more stress and less peace of mind. Learn how to take time for yourself without feeling guilty.

Finding work life balance in todays frantic world is no simple task. Spend more time at work than at home and you miss out on a rewarding personal life. Then again if youre facing challenges in your personal life such as caring for an aging parent or coping with marital or financial problems, concentrating on your job can be difficult.Whether the problem is too much focus on work or too little, when your work life and personal life feel out of balance, stress plus its harmful effects is the result.

Different types of meditation techniques can calm your mind and reduce your stress. Concentration meditation involves focusing your attention on one thing, such as your breathing, an image you visualize or a real you look at ? for example, a candle flame.

Feeling stressed is normal. And so are setbacks in dealing with stress. If you lapse into your old ways, dont give up. Focus on what you can do to gain control of the situation.One easy way to help yourself keep your cool and lighten your load is to remember the four As of managing stress avoid, alter, adapt or accept.

To help you through the stress of tough times, youll need a strong social support network made up of friends, family and peers. This differs from a support group, which is generally a structured meeting run by a mental health professional.Although both groups can play an important role in times of stress, a social support network is something you can develop when youre not under stress, providing the comfort of knowing that your friends are there if you need them. A coffee break with a friend at work, a quick chat with a neighbor, a phone call to your sister, even a visit to church are all ways to reduce stress while fostering lasting relationships with the people close to you.

Our brains are interconnected with our emotions and facial expressions. When people are stressed, they often hold a lot of the stress in their face. So laughs or smiles can help relieve some of that tension and improve the situation.

Call a friend, send an email. When you share your concerns or feelings with another person, it does help relieve stress. But its important that the person whom you talk to is someone whom you trust and whom you feel can understand and validate you. If your family is a stressor, for example, it may not alleviate your stress if you share your works woes with one of them.

Meditation and mindful prayer help the mind and body to relax and focus. Mindfulness can help people see new perspectives, develop self compassion and forgiveness. When practicing a form of mindfulness, people can release emotions that may have been causing the body physical stress. Much like exercise, research has shown that even meditating briefly can reap immediate benefits.

Goals and aim for daily consistency rather than perfect workouts. It s better to walk every day for 15 20 minutes than to wait until the weekend for a three hour fitness marathon. Lots of scientific data suggests that frequency is most important.

If you have a stress related problem, physical activity can get you in the right state of mind to be able to identify the causes of your stress and find a solution. To deal with stress effectively, you need to feel robust and you need to feel strong mentally. Exercise does that, says Cooper.Exercise wont make your stress disappear, but it will reduce some of the emotional intensity that youre feeling, clearing your thoughts and enabling you to deal with your problems more calmly.