4 strategies to cope with stress

Stress is a huge buzzword. So much is said, written and broadcasted on as many sources as possible. But still, so much has been experienced and people are remaining overwhelmed. You wouldn’t be at this line if you didn’t resonate somewhat with you – which is excellent! Hopefully, it’ll be your last stop before a restful state).

Most likely, what we are about to share was already put somewhere. Our expectation (and genuine desire) is that the framework we’re about to share is something we think you can make on a lifetime basis.

By this, you’ve experienced stress long enough to know what ‘it’ is and how ‘it’ feels. So we’ll cut that out, but if you’re interested in the neurophysics of ‘it’, refer to the notes at the bottom. Below, find the table of contents for this article:

1. Stress in perspective
2. Strategies to cope with stress
3. Quick wins you can have

1. Stress in perspective

Before we dive into the ‘actions’ for the actionable portion of this article, we need to ensure we both have the understanding that:

• You must choose your stress – sometimes (most often than not!), we are not the actors deciding our sources of stress. It can be a social pattern of feeling stress from your work ( but in fact, you feel pretty good, so there ‘must’ be something wrong, and you become anxious …); it can be family
• Not all stress is wrong – there are different stripes of stress, and depending on each, it can be helpful for you (short-term bursts of tension are great for enhancing performance); it needs to be monitored and thresholded into ‘healthy’ healing boundaries (medium to long term topics/issues recurring in your life and holding you back); detrimental when severely impacting your ability to live and enjoy life (chronic stress usually diagnosed along with other social pathologies);
• It is unavoidable, provided you’re alive – is more like the ‘that’ family relative than we need to bare with now and then or that high-maintenance neighbour; in both scenarios, for some events, we can prepare in advance, some others they show up and we need to cope with them.

Once we own our stress(es), we can not have it, which can be (or turned into) something outstanding. Let’s go through what we can do.

First, no rapid band will resolve and long time wound; however, life happens in real-time, and we need something to assist us in the ‘now’ while we build a more consolidated long-term cushioning.

2. Strategies to cope with stress

Our proposal aims for the long term through building positive anchors; here are some examples:

• educate yourself about stress and emotion management – as trendy as it sounds ( and is), deconstructing emotions helps make them ‘normal’ and have a more friendly relationship with the unpleasant ones. As we saw, we can not avoid ‘family’; the best we can do is have the best relationship possible, embrace it will be around and understand its mechanisms;
• journaling – like a ‘dear diary’ or a more factual description. Set a routine of mental hygiene by emptying the crowd content from your head to dump storage. Everything and anything is worthwhile writing. Moving concepts from ‘abstract’ thinking into concise wording is a straightforward tool to catch up with yourself
• exercise – blood flow is one the best stress relievers; physiologically, the body understands ‘stress’ as a general inflammation and develops anti-inflammatory defence mechanisms, which are very ‘expensive’ to maintain internally. Exercise shifts your attention and circulates oxygens plus metabolises toxins. It’s a win-win-win-win situation. Again, anything and everything that makes you move is eligible. A long hike, going to the gym classes, weightlifting. crossfit, dance, … as long as it’s part of your daily routine;
• nurture your body correctly – stress ( aka body inflammation) is also ( and hugely) increased by food intake. Processed food is very hard on the body – either to digest or make some efficient use of it. Therefore, it is (hugely) severe on how much stress it loads the body with. Incorporate as many package-free foods as possible into your eating habits. If it doesn’t have a package, it is probably something like unprocessed protein sources, fruits, or vegetables.

Pretty sure that you’d be expecting breathwork, or meditation, to be on the list, right? – well, it is pretty apparent, and you already know it. If you’re struggling with including as part of your routine, several groups have collective (free!) sessions for that, plus apps (some free, some not with. premium paid extended features… ) that you can add to your phone panel to guide your through. Drop a comment below if you have an interest in knowing more about this topic in specific.

3. Quick wins you can have

When life happens, some quick tricks can help you manage your response:

• write it out of your head – if something is looping in the front slideshow of your thinking that you can not address at the moment, take note of it somewhere ‘safe’, which you’ll refer to later ( also, audio recording can work);
• breathe – as simple as that, move your attention to your breathing and your breathing only. Identify the pace of your inhales (bringing the air in) and exhales (pushing the air out). Adjust it to a calmer pace: long inhale – count 4 secs; pause for a sec; long exhale – count 6 secs; do this for a couple of minutes (literally 1 min, you’ll feel different already!)

As we said, we combined most of this, but others before us shared this.

Consider the following readings for more tips and tweaks on this matter: the power of habit; the obstacle is the way. Would you be able to incorporate at least one of these today? Perhaps this week? – eager to hear from you! At Stellaxius, we believe that a balanced and safe environment will help us cope with stress, so we’re building a culture where well-being is our number 1 priority. Don’t forget to subscribe to our Knowledge Center for similar content!