Your Essential Guide to Stress Management

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We all have our own favorite expression when it comes to being stressed out. But when it comes down to it, I think it’s how we work, or even relaxed for that matter, that triggers stress. Ever been stressed out even when you're well relaxed and bored? I know I have. Here are some techniques that you can implement easily to help relieve your stress level.

It's important to find ways to decrease and prevent stressful incidents, but no matter what, they are going to happen. The best way to handle them when they do occur is to decrease your negative reactions to stress. Here are some of the things that can be done. You can do a few of them in a longer span of time, but you should try to use these techniques whenever you can as the situations occur.


Time Management
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Time management skills can allow you more time with your family and friends and increase your performance and productivity. This will also help reduce your stress.

To improve your time management:

- Save time by focusing and concentrating, delegating, and scheduling time for yourself.

- Keep a record of how you spend your time, including work, family, and leisure time.

- Prioritize your time by rating tasks by importance and urgency. Redirect your time to those activities that are important and meaningful to you. Don't move on to an unimportant task until the top priorities are complete!

- Manage your commitments by not over, or under, committing. Don't commit to what is not important to you.

- Deal with procrastination by using a day planner, breaking large projects into smaller ones, and setting short-term deadlines.

- Examine your beliefs to reduce conflict between what you believe and what your life is like.

- Build healthy coping strategies.


It is important that you identify your strategies for coping with different situations that could, and probably will, arise. One way to do this is by recording the stressful event, your reaction, and how you handled it in a journal. With this information, you can work to change unhealthy strategies into healthy ones. Those changes will help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life. Jim Rohn (my favorite personal development mentor) says that "The same wind blows on us all, it's the set of your sails that determines the course you will take in your life ..." Think about this profound statement ... it is SO true!


Lifestyle
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Some behaviors and lifestyle choices affect your stress level. They may not cause stress directly, but they can interfere with the way your body seeks relief from stress.

Try these tips:

- Balance personal, work, and family needs and obligations. This can be difficult at best sometimes and can be a source of stress on all by itself!

- Have a sense of purpose in life.

- Get enough sleep, since your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you are sleeping.

- Eat a balanced diet for a nutritional defense against stress.

- Get moderate exercise throughout the week.

- Limit your consumption of alcohol.

- Don't smoke.


Social Support
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Social support is a major factor in how we experience and handle stress. Social support is the positive support you receive from family, friends, and the community. It is the knowledge that you are cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued. More and more research indicates a strong relationship between social support and better mental and physical health.


Changing Your Way of Thinking
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When an event triggers negative thoughts, you may experience fear, insecurity, anxiety, depression, rage, guilt, and a sense of worthlessness or powerlessness. These emotions trigger the body's stress sensors, just as an actual threat does. Dealing with your negative thoughts and how you see things can help reduce stress. Try to replace your negativeness with positive thoughts.

-Thought replacement helps you stop a negative thought to help eliminate stress. Try to always see the "bright side" of any situation. This may be difficult, but it is necessary.

Let me tell you a quick story related to the last statement before moving on:

Four years ago I was laid off from my $80,000 per year job. We were on a 10 year contract for research and development of emerging Air Traffic Control Systems for the US government! Two years into the contract, we were given 3 days notice, no offer of alternate employment, and no severance pay! When the War in Iraq began, the government pulled all of our project money and put it towards Homeland Security. Now, we support our troops and our country to the fullest, but talk about a panic attack! Robin and I had no idea what to do or where to turn! They sent 200 people packing and put them out on the street. I admit that at first we were in panic mode and only saw the negative side of the situation. But after a few days we realized that this could be a blessing in disguise. This was the beginning of our Network Marketing careers and we have NEVER looked back since! It ended up being the BEST thing that ever could have happened! My personal stress level went down and my blood pressure actually dropped to normal levels and I didn't have to take my blood pressure medication any longer! My doctor asked me: "What did you do? Your blood pressure is normal!" My answer? "I got laid off!" Incredible!

So let's move on, I just wanted to share that story to make a point about the importance of last bulleted statement. It should not be overlooked!

- Disproving irrational thoughts helps you to avoid exaggerating the negative thought, anticipating the worst, and interpreting an event incorrectly.

- You need to always identify all aspects of a stressful event and find positive ways to deal with it.


Changing your communication style helps you relate in a way that makes your views known without making others feel put down, hostile, or intimidated. This reduces the stress that comes from poor communication. Use the assertiveness ladder to improve your communication style.

Even writers like me can get stressed even though we're just using our hands to do the talking. Having to sit for 7 or 8 hours at a time is already stressful enough, and we have our own methods to relieve stress. Whether you're the mail person, the CEO, or the average working parent, stress is an unwanted visitor you would love to remove from your home, work, and especially your life.

As always, Make IT A GREAT Day!

About the Author:

Lou and Robin Bonaventura have been Professional
Network Marketers for the past 4 years. They attribute
much of their success to personal development and
consistent learning. Visit their Learning Center
for more insight into how personal development can
benefit you.