How to manage your stress?| Stress Management.

What is Stress and Stressor? What are the ways to handle this?

STRESS is the act done by your body and mind to encounter or to face some challenges or demands.

And STRESSOR is a factor which gives you Stress.

STRESS IS OF TWO TYPES.

1. Positive stress: Positive stress is also known as Eustress Which is good for us. This type of stress occurs when you are in a unique and challenging situation and whose result can be positive…

for example: Trying a new hobby/activity, when you join a new job, profile of new job…etc.

2. Negative stress: It is also known as distress. This can alter or disturb your health….

for example: Job loss, financial problem, relationship problem, losing any close people..etc.
In this you feel tired, headache, not being happy with anything and not focusing on work.

Now the topic is how to relieve and prevent stress?

HOW TO RELIEVE AND PREVENT STRESS?

You can manage your Stress in two ways:

1. Fight response: By fighting with the situation

2. Flight response: by going away from the situation

Its very important to prevent and control stress with good actions and at a good time.

You can manage your Stress using 4A rule which is given below:

Avoid: Avoid those things who give you Stress and when needed learn to say NO.
Alter: Try to find an alternative to that problem which is giving you Stress.
Adapt: Learn to adapt yourself according to the situation.
Accept: Try to accept the situation when it is not in your favour and keep on learning new things.

HERE ARE 3 APPROACHES FROM WHICH YOU CAN MANAGE YOUR STRESS:

1. ACTION-ORIENTATION APPROACH:

If you are in a stressful condition, you can control, prevent with your good actions and at a good time very easily with a suitable action. This is called Action oriented approach.

For example:
If you have to reach your office at 10 AM and if you are stuck in traffic then either you change your way or you leave your home 10-15 minutes earlier so that you can reach your office on time. This step is called an Action oriented step.

IN ACTION ORIENTED APPROACH THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KEEP IN MIND…

a) Planning and delegation

To fight with daily life stress planning is required.

For example: If u don’t have planning according to your work and you have to complete your work in a day then you will miss your deadline of work completion and due to which you will become stressed.
Planning helps in scheduling and prioritizing your tasks.
It is possible that you may fail in doing your every work and getting success in it if you do your tasks by yours own and you might not get the outcome according to your expectation because you are not giving 100% to your every work. So you should divide your work to your co-workers who can do the work without your help.

b) Managing time

You can manage time by:

Creating a to-do list
Understanding the difference between important and urgent work
Avoiding too much multitasking

if you want to avoid stress then switch off your mind before going to bed.

c) Managing people

People can give you lots of stress. Due to some people you can face some conflict situations.
So in front of those people you have to be confident which basically means:

To present your personal feelings, opinions and beliefs in a positive way in front of everyone.
Manage your boundaries.
Learn to neglect unreasonable requests.

d) Changing habits

You have to observe and identify your habits which give you stress.
For example: you are stressed because you are not reaching your office on time because you wake up very late….so to avoid this stress you have to avoid or change your habit of waking up late.

e) Keeping a stress diary

This will help you in understanding the reasons and your reactions of your stress. If you daily maintain this diary then you can easily identify the stressor and can manage your stress.

2. EMOTIONAL ORIENTATION APPROACH.

You can avoid your stress by responding instead of reacting to it.

In this approach you don’t need to change the situation instead you have to change your reaction as per situation, you can do this as:

a) Reframing situation

Rather than getting stressed about an unfavourable situation, you can reframe the situation or change the perspective towards it to feel less stressed.

b) Positive affirmations

From morning to evening you encounter lots of negative thoughts, you have to listen to lots of negative thoughts therefore to encourage yourself it is very important that you always think positive and talk positive. If you think positive and talk positive and feel positive then you will be free from stress.

c) Looking at a big picture

Most of the time you become stressed thinking about the short term. So you should try to look at the bigger picture and look for more opportunities.

3. ACCEPTANCE APPROACH

There are some things which happen in everyone’s life which you can’t change, then just accept them.
For example: we can’t do anything about covid situation, we can only accept it. Similarly you should manage stress.

Acceptance approach should be an attitude instead of an emotional one so that you can’t get rid of stress in every situation.

There are many ways to practice this approach including:

Mindful meditation
Physical exercise
Diet
Taking social support
Seek professional help

CAUSES OF STRESS

1. LARGER THAN LIFE EXPECTATION

Expectations are the main reason for heartache. The less you expect , the easier your life will be.

THIS EXPECTATION IS DIVIDED INTO 3 TYPES:

a) Situational expectation:

In this you always expect a positive outcome, but sometimes results dont come according to your efforts.

For example: in some examinations results do not come according to the expectations..and due to this you come in stress…or….if u have business and you expect a huge amount of return but the return does not happen according to your expectation and you come in stress.

YOU HAVE TO BE REALISTIC ON YOUR EXPECTATIONS, IF YOU ARE REALISTIC THEN YOU WILL NOT GET STRESS.

b) Interpersonal expectations:

when u expect more from your surroundings peoples and they don’t behave according to your expectations then you feel stressed. Only you can control this behavior of yours.

c) Self imposed expectations:

you feel stressed when you keep unrealistic expectations from yourself or rash after unreasonable targets or perform inessential Actions and lay hold of inessential pressure. The people who are more active on social media, they compare their life with others, and start thinking of living their life like others…which is the main reason for stress.

IT IS COMMON IF YOU ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH YOUR WORK. BUT THE ONE WHO CAN CONTROL HIS/HER EXPECTATION AND BE REALISTIC CAN EASILY GET RID OF STRESS.

2. LACK OF ACCEPTANCE

You can increase your inner strength and self confidence by accepting the challenges of life which will help you in reducing your stress.

3. LACK OF TIME MANAGEMENT

If you learn how to manage time then you can easily manage your stress.

Here is some tips from which you can manage your time:

Adapting the art of planning and balancing
Prioritizing work in the following levels:

A – important and urgent- The task that you need
to finish today
B – important but not urgent- The task that you can do today or tomorrow whenever you have time
C – Not important and not urgent – The task that you can do in a week comfortably

This is knows as ABC technique of time management.

4. BEING A COMPANY OF NEGATIVE PEOPLE

Negative people will only think negative be it in a situation, feedback or about any opinion.

This is also possible that you are confident about any idea but his/her negativity can destroy your positivity.

Whenever you are around negative people your energy also becomes low. Negative people not only give you negativity but also they decrease your personal and professional growth.

Therefore you have to keep distance from negative people to be away from stress. According to F. Hanson:

People inspire you or they drain you. Pick themwisely.

5. LIVING IN THE PAST

If your past is not good then don’t remember it in your present. Due to this your present will be affected and you will be in serious stress. Instead of thinking about the past you should move ahead with your present enthusiastically.

6. BEING ANXIOUS ABOUT FUTURE

You can’t be happy thinking about your future. You should focus on your present, you should learn to be happy in your present. To be happy in the present you should learn from childrens who are always happy irrespective of situations.

7. TRAUMATIC EVENTS

Traumatic events (like: death, divorce, sickness, big loss in business etc…) are the ones that harm you emotionally and physically.

IMPACT OF STRESS

1. Physical health issues like:

Irritation
Weakness
Stomach
Fatigue
Sleep disorder

2. Mental health issues like:

Lack of focus
Tension
Anxiety
High blood pressure
Depression

3. Emotional health issue that can lead to smoking and drinking.

4. spiritual health issues that force you to live in fear and anxiety.

5. behavior issues- you get irritated on small things and you want to live alone

TIPS

track what makes you stressed
become your own stress researcher
listen to the feedback
learn to pause
listen to yourself to identify the situation that increases your stress.
Identify your stress trigger and work on them
Keep realistic expectations to reduce the stress level
Manage your time to avoid stressful situations.

AWARENESS

In stress management awareness is very important. Some people easily get stressed but some people easily come out from the stress. But this is only possible if you are self aware.