How I manage stress
Fear has two meanings: forget everything and run or face everything and rise. The choice is yours.
— www.brightvibes.com
Hello,
I hope you are well and healthy in those times when covid19 pandemic is creating so much panic in the world. Take care of yourself and the close ones! We are living in strange times full of fear and uncertainty. Be bold, be present and be grateful for all the wonders of your life.
Thinking at my first post about the stress I had realized something. All that I have written there are general things on how to handle better stress. What I want to make different in this following post is to share my personal opinion about dealing with this feeling. So let’s begin!
What is stress?
I define stress as a feeling of anxiety about an imagined or real danger that may or may not happen. What I discovered through the years is that most of the bad things we imagine do not happen. Our minds have an extraordinary habit to automatically worry ourselves about things. This is due to its automatic survival mode developed in our beginnings as humans. Our mind tries to protect us from physical and mental pain. But think of the successful people we look up to. They have endured short or long pain periods before they succeed even if their minds were telling them: you can’t succeed, you don’t have the skills, you are not so smart, look at your competition, is so hard, you should better watch tv, play a game or just loose time on social media is more comfortable, you are too tired and the list can go on. Those sentences are different from person to person. Our narrative is not always helping us to make the best decisions, so we must be careful with our thoughts. Sometimes a hard time can lead to long term happiness.
In conclusion, stress is something made up by our minds, thoughts, and habits. As a simple example to accomplish this just think about how each person around you reacts to the same stressful situation. Some of them freeze, some run, some panic, a few are present in the moment, see the things as they are and act in their best way to solve them. This is the type of person that I want you to become.
How stress manifests?
It is funny for me to think about how anxiety occurs because I realize that stress has been and still is a big part of my life and behavior. But I had never realized this before because I was too distracted about the daily tasks that I wanted to complete. To do this kind of analysis, you need to have an overview of your life. I recommend to stop for a while and look at your behaviors as you would do to someone else and see what you discover.
But let's get back to our question: how stress manifests itself?
You feel a continuous worry about all the things around that can go wrong: going to work, receiving a phone call, making a difficult task, a long checklist that never ends, the people around you that always want something.
When you are alone and you have nothing to do you sense agitation that goes from your mind to your body. This makes you uncomfortable so you can’t relax and rejuvenate. Most of us find something to distract themselves from this feeling, from the truth, from the pain. But we must search for the reason and find our internal peace.
The focus of a nervous person is on negative things. It is so overwhelmed by these thoughts that he stops to see the blessings around him that make our life wonderful.
A stressful person will never admit that he is like this. He will blame the hard situation in which he is, the persons around him, the number of things to be done, even the weather or the government.
You always work on something, but at the same time, you think of the other tasks that are waiting in line. In this way, you put more pressure on yourself. After a task is done, you run to another, and the cycle repeats. In the end, you are exhausted, you don’t remember all that you have done, you feel stress because there is so much more to do and you don’t feel pleased about the things that you have completed. Celebrate all your wins to gain momentum.
Physically feelings of stress are headaches, tiredness, incomplete breaths, your whole body is tight, your heart is racing, the hands are sweaty, you feel a pain in the chest, sometimes you even have a blurry vision.
Please think it trough and realize what kind of person you are and from there grow in the person you want to become.
What we can do to better deal with stress?
Let’s be honest, stress will always be in our lives, so don’t believe that it will evaporate someday. What we can do, is to change our behavior when it shows up. In the following sentences, you will see my step by step solution for this feeling.
As a first step, I think it is very important to be present with ourselves and detect in time raising anxiety. Don’t let the monster grow strong from your fear. If we neglect it too much, it will be harder and harder to fight it. So when we feel that worry starts to mess us up we need to stop for a while, even is for one minute.
In the second step, you need to calm yourself down using some practices that work for you. This could be: making a short walk outside, meditate, yoga, a short nap, talking with a friend, sport, reading or doing something you like. Stress will not disappear instantly, be patient you will feel a little better, and in time you will be an expert at calming yourself down.
The third step is finding the reason that is creating this worry. So please ask yourself: What am I really afraid of? You will be amazed by what you will find out. Understanding this will make you aware of yourself and your thinking, this is powerful.
In the fourth step, you need to deal with your reason for panic. Doing this will not be easy, but it will worth the job in the long term. If you don’t fight it now it will appear and reappear over and over again causing more pain. So face the dragon like a fearless knight. This step is the most important of them all because can solve your problem forever. Just think how better will you feel without all that pressure you have on your shoulders.
At step five, you need to move on with your daily activities, without carrying previous feelings of anxiety. You must never give up, always growing, always thriving. But be careful, not all the goals deserve your energy, you need to choose them wisely and adapt on the road.
Examples:
You are at work and you get to do something difficult urgently. So stress is nocking to your door again. What your brain will say first: this is impossible, this is hard, this can’t be done. You need to realize that your worry is beginning to raise, so the best thing would be to calm yourself down with one of the practices from above. After that realize what is the reason for this feeling, why you are afraid of? Some answers could be: I am afraid that I will not finish in time, that my bosses will be angry at me, that my colleagues will think bad about me, that I will have a bad evaluation from my boss, that I will disappoint myself, etc. Whatever the answer is, you need to understand that you are the only constant of your life, the rest are problems, people or events that come and go. Accept that you can’t control everything and do your best from a peaceful place. After this please continue the work with patience and tranquility. You can do it!
For a better understanding, I will give you another example. Let’s suppose you have a close relative or friend that is very ill, his life is in danger. You are worried about his condition and you don’t know how to act. The awareness of growing stress is the first thing that you must see. Then you find a way to calm yourself down. After that with a clear mind, you should ask: What am I really afraid of? Possible answers could be: the relative could die, the pain of this incident is unbearable, I can’t see him like this, I am panicked, I don’t know how to handle this. Then you need to face the fact that this is a hard situation that only doctors, family, friends and God can improve. Creating more stress about it will only worsen the situation so accept those facts and move on. Be your best self, don’t give up, help with what you can do. To be together with the ones you love is one of the best blessings of life.
I know it's not easy to make all those steps and get the results that you expect. I don’t pretend that I found the best formula to eliminate stress, but I can assure you that this framework will make you better at it. Please remember: the most important project of your life is you!
Hear what I suggest you do after reading this post. Begin a habit of one month practicing those steps each time when stress kicks in. After this period just evaluate if your life is better if you feel better. I will be so happy to know that my words helped you. If you have some other ideas or comments about this post please share them with me, I will be glad to hear them. Please subscribe to my blog and you will receive more articles like this. Together we will thrive in our lives.
Have a nice day, see you next time!