Here’s how you can prevent and relieve stress

Stress is a large contributor to health difficulties and is unavoidable in today’s fast-paced way of life. No matter what is contributing to your stress, you need to find ways to keep it in check, not just for your own health and sanity but also for other aspects of your life such as relationships and work. Stress management and prevention should be part of your daily routine. This way you ensure that you address what’s causing your stress and how you can manage it.

What exactly is stress?

Many of us suffer from it but don’t really understand what it is and what the underlying causes are. To identify stress in your life you need to know what it is. Stress refers to any emotional or external strain that causes your body to react in fight or flight mode. This means that your body senses danger and reacts by releasing adrenaline to fight off the danger. Even though you’re not in any physical danger, your body perceives it as that and reacts accordingly. This means that you’re in a constant state of fight or flight mode. In order to address stress, you need to determine what is making your body feel this way.

There are many things that can cause stress in your life, such as:

● Having a busy schedule
● Poor planning
● Poor time management
● Pressure at work
● Difficulties in your relationships
● Traffic jams
● Negativity
● Changes in your life

6 tips to manage and prevent stress

1. Exercise

This might seem like a cliché but exercising helps to significantly reduce stress. It releases endorphins – the happy hormone which will make you feel better and more positive. And you might think that you’re already so overwhelmed, where will you find time to exercise but it doesn’t have to be hours spent at the gym. You can easily get some exercise by going for a short walk or doing a 15-minute HIIT training session. You can also start doing yoga, whether you go to a studio or do it from the comfort of your home with the help of YouTube, yoga is a very mindful practice where you can focus on yourself and get some exercise in. All of this can be done from the comfort of your own home with a little bit of googling.

2. Meditation/awareness

Meditation isn’t just sitting cross-legged on a mountain doing breathing exercises, it can be just taking a few minutes for yourself where you don’t think of everything that still needs to be done and forget about the world by only focusing on yourself. It’s about awareness of who you are and what you’re good at. Focus on the positive of your day and let go of the things that you don’t have control over. If you’re keen to do meditation, there are many free apps that you can use to help you get meditation down. Another option is doing yoga breathing exercises where you learn to breathe in the positive and breathe out the negative.

3. Adjust your diet

What you put into your body greatly affects your body’s ability to combat things such as illness and stress. Often when we are stressed, we turn to things like junk food, alcohol, sugar and smoking to take the edge off. This affects your energy, mood and stress levels and can only make you feel worse. That doesn’t mean that you should never indulge, but that you need to monitor when you indulge and that you don’t make a habit of it when you’re stressed. If you rely on sugars, you’re likely to crash and become stressed. Eating more fresh whole foods like fruits and veggies will help your body respond better to infections and negativity and keep your mood elevated.

4. Spend time with loved ones

Being able to relax around the people you love helps to relieve stress as it creates a safe space for you to share your emotions and be yourself. When you spend time with people that bring positivity into your life it’s a great way to destress.

5. Learn to say no

A key point in managing your stress is managing your time and schedule. This is why it’s important to know when you can agree to doing something and when you need to say no. You need to manage your time optimally to keep you from having more work than you have time in the day which will also decrease your stress. This is done by having a clear, updated schedule and sticking to it. Put together a planner and if it’s not on the planner or if there isn’t space for it, then you don’t spend time on it.

6. Get some sleep

Getting a good night’s sleep helps to regulate your stress levels. Insomnia is one of the leading causes of stress and getting a good night’s rest can help to bring down your stress levels. Oversleeping can also contribute to negative thoughts and stress, which is why you need to get the right amount of sleep to keep you refreshed and energetic.

Keeping down your stress levels has a positive impact on your overall health which is why it’s important that you take the necessary steps to ensure that you manage and keep your stress in check. This can decrease your chances to get illnesses like heart disease, mental disorders such as anxiety and depression and muscle tension. Keeping a healthy balance in terms of your daily routine will help you combat stress.