Use stress to your advantage

One thing is for sure – if you avoid all stressful situations, your life will be stagnant. Growth requires dealing with stress.

How do you deal with stress?
1 Are you an escape artist, distractor or solver? Most people respond to stress in one of the following three ways:

• An escape artist does everything he can to remove himself from the situation. Any solution that removes the stress over the short term is a good option in his mind. The long-term consequences are of little concern. Do you hate your job? You quit, even if you don’t have another job. Do you have relationship stress? You leave the person. You get the picture.
• The distractor attempts to distract himself from the issue that is causing the stress. This distraction often takes the form of watching TV, shopping, doing chores, surfing the internet or eating unhealthy foods.
• The solver focusses on finding solutions to solve the stress. If there isn’t a solution to the stress, the solver does his best to relax and avoid worrying about anything beyond his control.

2 Negative effects of poor responses: Poor responses to stress can impact your physical and emotional health negatively, as they tend to internalise the stress or cause worse results than the original issue. Learning to respond to stress effectively is good for you in many ways!
3 Positive ways: A huge part of being successful depends on how you handle stress. Most successful people learn positive ways to manage their stress. It’s clear that stress is a part of life that must be managed effectively to maximise success, health and happiness.

Calm down

Deadlines to meet, problems to solve, traffic to wait in, bills to pay: The list of things that stress you out is long. In fact, modern life seems to be filled with stress from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night.

When faced by a stressful situation, what can you do? The ideas below are practical and can be used in emergencies, or when you realise that you have been experiencing some stress for a while. Let us explore several easy and practical ways to deal with stress.

Firstly, what does the body do when it is stressed and how can you identify low-level stress? You need to be aware of how your body responds to stress, because it is much easier to ‘tame’ if you can catch it before it ‘takes over’.

PHYSIOLOGICAL SIGNS OF STRESS

When you find yourself in a stressful situation, you often find that:

• Your breathing becomes more rapid. Your body is getting the ‘fight-and-flight’ response ready so you can fight or run away.
• Your heart pumps faster to give you more blood for your fight or flight. You may get heart palpitations, chest pains or begin to feel flushed. Your heart is doing its best to help you in your fight or flight.
• As your blood pressure increases, more blood is pumped into your body so that you can run or fight. You might get a headache or feel pressure in your head.
• You feel tight, anxious, nervous and irritable. The hormone cortisol begins to rush through your body, getting you ready for the fight or flight. This spreads to all the organs and cells to ‘get ready’.

So, are you going to suffer from early aging and illness, which is what long-term stress can do to you? No, you can do something about it. By using tools and techniques, you can turn stress into transformation.

Reduce daily stress

Here are some ideas to help in ‘transforming stress’. Use them often.

Learning how to deal with stress is something that everybody needs to know. Your health can suffer from the effects of stress, which can make it difficult to think clearly enough to solve even the simplest task. The good news is that there are simple and easy techniques for reducing your stress.

As more studies show the link between stress and many health problems, stress management becomes an important consideration for many people. These common ways of stress management can help you to reduce the stress levels in your life, so make good use of them.

MASSAGE

The first method for reducing and managing stress levels, is to get a massage. This has often been thought of as a great way to relieve sore muscles, but it can also reduce overall body tension, anxiety and stress. Many studies prove that a regular massage is a great way to reduce stress.

There are many different types of massages, so you should try several types and find the one that you prefer. Nowadays it’s usually easy to find qualified massage therapists. A massage can release endorphins in the brain, which produce pleasure that is helpful in stress reduction and with emotional issues such as anxiety and depression, to name a few.

RELAXATION TECHNIQUES

Everybody has probably already heard about various methods of relaxation. Some of the most popular methods are basic meditation and the various forms of yoga. You can attend online or actual classes to learn the different parts of these methods so you can learn to relax.

Other options than these major relaxation techniques are also available. A simpler and more straightforward option would be to learn deep breathing techniques. You can use these even when you are seated at your workstation. Progressive muscle relaxation and mental imagery are also basic techniques that you can use against stress.

EXERCISING

Maintaining a regular exercise schedule can do wonders for your body. The major benefit of exercise is that it encourages proper blood circulation. This, in turn, ensures that oxygen and nutrients reach the various cells in your body. You need these if you ever hope to fight the bad effects of stress on your health.

Live a less stressful life

As much as stress is part of your life, how you manage it greatly determines its impact on your well-being. When stress is left untreated, it can lead to both physical and mental destruction. This means developing your mindfulness level can be a big step towards managing any kind of stress that comes your way.

While consulting a therapist can help to relieve your stress, practising self-help techniques can be particularly useful in curbing your tension and worries. You don’t have to spend money to get rid of your stress. All you need to do is set aside some time in your busy schedule to pay attention to your emotional and mental well-being.

Here are some simple yet useful techniques that can help you live a stress-free life.

Focus on your breathing: Practising breathing exercises can be a simple yet powerful way of reaching your inner self to help you live in the moment. Most of the time, stress is caused by anxiety, worry, fear, regrets and pleasure seeking. If you find it hard to overcome all these negative emotions, the best thing to do is to take deep breaths while focusing on your breathing. Find a quiet place, relax and start breathing slowly and deeply as you count your breaths. This encourages awareness of bodily tension, which in turn beats any form of stress.

Practise progressive relaxation: When you are stressed or tense, it’s often healthier to get enough relaxation. You can try progressive relaxation by tensing different parts of your body and then relaxing them. Try this with your entire body until you feel completely relaxed. Be sure to incorporate slow, deep breaths in each session. This technique will take only 20 to 30 minutes and can greatly help you to relax physically.

Creative visualisation: Immersing yourself into imagination that takes you to a place where you can only hear the sounds of the trees, wind or waves, can really help to take your stress away. You can picture yourself in a hammock on the beach, lying in a soft green field or sitting at a comfortable veranda enjoying the evening breeze. This form of creative visualisation can induce a state of relaxation and help lower your stress levels significantly. Be sure to do the following while visualising:

• Find a quiet place to focus consistently.
• Relax your body and mind to seamlessly manoeuvre your thoughts.
• Take slow, deep breaths before you begin the process.
• Only focus on the good things that appeal to your soul.

Whether you are having financial problems, worry about the future or any other social tension, your breath is a powerful tool to curb your stress. No matter the amount of tension you are experiencing, reaching for your inner soul can help you relax. This will lead to both emotional and physical well-being and is a recipe for living happily in the present.

Final thoughts

Although people usually think of stress as something negative, there is another side to the story: Through the ages it seems like the human body has developed ways to handle stress in much more complex and ingenious ways than you realise. It may even help you to grow stronger and healthier.

Everyone has heard a million times that stress is bad for you and that it’s the cause of most illnesses. So why should you suddenly embrace it?

Think about what stress really is: A reaction that occurs when something you care about is at stake. This could be your frustration about a traffic jam or your grief about the loss of a loved one.

Positivity is such a powerful form of belief that it can influence your body’s health. Such beliefs can be considered mindsets – superior to preferences or learned facts. Usually based on your own understanding of how the world works, mindsets affect how you think, act and feel.

The reality is that seeing the upside of things leads to a drastic improvement in your coping abilities. Rather than relying on ineffective avoidance strategies, people who see the upside can take proactive steps to deal with their stress. Their bodies demonstrate a healthier physical response to stress – they have faster recovery times and a reduced risk of depression, heart attacks and diseases.

Your attitude towards stress is a central part of your mindset that shapes the choices you make in everyday life. If you view stress as harmful, you tend to try and avoid it at all costs. On the other hand, people who view stress as helpful are more likely to come up with strategies to cope with the source of stress, seek help and make the best of the situation.

Several stress responses can help you to face difficulties with a positive outlook. One of these is the challenge response. It’s similar to the fight-or-flight response, but suited to situations that, while pressing, do not threaten your survival. The challenge response releases cortisol and adrenaline to generate a feeling of self-confidence and the motivation to learn from a tough experience.

Another positive stress response is the ‘tend-and-befriend’ response, which is where you talk to a close friend or loved one when feeling stressed. This action causes the release of the hormone oxytocin. Commonly referred to as the love molecule, oxytocin encourages you to connect with others through caring social relationships.

As well as helping you to deal with stress in the present, positive stress responses also leave an imprint on your brain, like a vaccine. These experiences teach your body and mind how to handle similar stress in the future. This is why going through stress makes you better at coping with it in the long run.

Stress can make your life feel difficult, as if it’s so much of a struggle, but using these tools can make a significant change to your life if your use them regularly and correctly.

Despite what you may have thought, stress isn’t always bad for you. If you approach stressful experiences as something you can learn from, then you certainly will. Learn from stress today for more resilience tomorrow.

References

• Coetzee D, 2020. Coping with stress: E-book
• McGonical K, Ph.D. The upside of stress: Why stress is good for you, and how to get good at it
• https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/11874-stress
• https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-management.htm
• https://www.verywellmind.com/stress-management-4157211