We all experience stress in multiple ways throughout our life. Whether it’s daily stress that accumulates over time or life-altering issues we often face, stress can impact our bodies in a variety of ways. Stress has been directly linked to an increase in depression, high blood pressure, strokes, and anxiety.
Science has proven that people who have regular, prolonged instances of stress over their life are usually the ones with the major cardiovascular problems later in life. In that way, you can almost consider stress to be a meat tenderizer that takes its toll on your body. It can even cause weight and memory issues.
While stress is a normal part of life, how we deal with it is under our control. We all work really hard, trying to make it and fighting all sorts of obstacles. Money problems can heighten the stress you feel. You might be facing some major bills or struggle to keep your debt in check.
1) Wake Up Earlier
How you start your day can impact the way the rest of your day goes. A lot of people wake up as late as they can and RUSH RUSH RUSH out the door. They barely have enough time to grab something to eat or they hit the fast food joint on the way to work. The best thing you can do for yourself in the morning is to SLOW DOWN.
If you drink coffee in the morning, it takes about 20 minutes for the caffeine to metabolize in your body to full effect. Take that time in the morning to slow down the morning rush. When going at your pace, you may find that your days are smoother and less hectic, especially if you battle traffic each morning.
Center yourself. Go in relaxed and ready to take on the day versus in a bad mood.
2) Take Up a Hobby
What better way to take your mind off a bad day or stressful situation than to indulge in a favorite hobby? When the mind gets flooded with thought after thought and worries you’re constantly facing, there’s no better way to direct the mind than by focusing on something else instead. Our brain isn’t that good at multitasking and likes to bounce around. But if you can focus on that one activity, like gardening, scrapbooking, or knitting, it has a way of channeling those thoughts and energy to the task at hand.
“There’s something about the tactile element of scrapbooking—cutting, pasting, positioning—that is probably more relaxing than posting online,” says Nina Savelle-Rocklin, PsyD, a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist. With gardening, you hold the soil in your hands and spend more time outside in the sun. Whatever you do, pick one thing and put all your focus and energy into it.
3) Good Food
The kind of food you eat can either make you or break you when it comes to stress. When we’re under stress, most people have the tendency to start munching on some not-so-good foods. The rise in cortisol is linked to wild cravings for sugar and heavy carbs, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. It becomes a nasty endless cycle of weight gain and even higher cortisol levels, leading to more binge eating.
Those types of foods are also high in things like chemicals, preservatives, sodium. The high-sodium content alone will make you feel bloated, increase your blood pressure, and leave you feeling blah mentally. The trick with these kinds of processed foods and carbs is you become addicted to them, so you keep running to them when feeling down.
4) Simplify Your Life
It seems like everything we do in life is about seeking out something bigger and better than what we already have. We work extra hours to pay for the things we don’t need. While it’s nice to have things, all this extra stuff can complicate our lives severely. Is it worth the stress and health issues it leads to? Only you can decide that.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone, but take a moment away from the grind and look around. Are the goals in your life meaningful? We are seeing more and more books and magazines with this same message. And it’s not necessarily about living frugally, but just slowing down to smell the roses, so to speak. Declutter your house. Downsize certain goals and ambitions that just seem to bring you down.
5) Exercise
In a lot of ways, this point can go along with taking up a hobby. Not only does exercise give you something to focus on, it also helps to burn all the stress hormones that build up in your muscles. Another benefit to exercise is you simply become a fitter person. Someone who is fit is able to handle stressful situations better than someone who is not.
6) Meditation
A few of the stress busters mentioned above involve distracting yourself. Sometimes, though, a distraction isn’t enough. You need to fully remove yourself from the stressor. There are a lot of great ways to do this. Meditation is one of them. Meditation is essentially another word for “relax.” Take some deep breaths. Listen to soothing music.
We all need to find ways to just get away from the grind. If we allow stress to constantly eat at us, every single day, it will only make us sick and miserable. By changing the way we look at our priorities, taking some time away to relax, eating the right foods, and doing the things we love can really fight back and help us win the war against stress.
