HEALTHY LIFESTYLES AND YOU
Beating Stress – Ten Hot Tips
by Merike Mannik
Do you find yourself on a seemingly endless merry-go-round ride of frenzied
activity, where you end up wanting to shout, “Stop the world, I want to get
off!”? Or, alternatively, are you someone who frequently feels ‘edgy’
because you’ve got too much time on your hands and not enough to do? If so,
you could either be the victim of too much stress in your life, or too little.
Stress is a natural and unavoidable part of daily life and can be either good
(“eustress”, which gives us that little boost of adrenalin that gets us going)
or bad (being over or under-stressed, resulting in distress). Symptoms of
bad stress include headaches, weight loss or gain, palpitations, muscle
tension, stomach upsets, sleep difficulties and increased anxiety. Stress
triggers can range from environmental factors such as noise to life-changing
events such as the death of someone close to you, moving house, illness,
separation or divorce, and retirement.
When faced with stress, we have a tendency to revert to primitive
responses of either ‘fight or flight’. Instead of being reactive, a healthy
alternative is to learn how to take charge and manage stress in our lives,
rather than attack or run from the cause of it.
Here are ten ‘hot tips’ for getting on top of stress:
1. Use your support networks.
Remember, “a problem shared is a problem halved.”
2. Live in “the here and now”.
Much of what we worry about never actually happens, so stop yourself
from painting ‘worst case’ scenarios in your mind and prophesizing ‘doom
and gloom’.
3. Sigh several times a day.
A sigh is a quick and effective means of increasing oxygen to the body
and releasing tension.
4. Change your thought tapes.
Think ‘can’ instead of ‘can’t’ and focus on positives not negatives.
5. Don’t spend $10-00 worth of energy on a 10 cent problem.
Before getting ‘stressed out’ over a particular situation, ask yourself
the following questions – Does a threat really exist? Is the issue
important to me? Can I make a difference? If the answer to any of
these questions is “no”, don’t waste your stress energy…
it’s not worth it to you.
6. Indulge yourself in healthy ways.
Find outlets for excess stress such as regular exercise, taking a long,
hot bath, meditating, relaxing to soothing music or getting a massage.
7. Stay away from stimulants.
Avoid high sugar and refined carbohydrate foods, caffeine, alcohol and
nicotine, all of which can act as “irritants”.
8. Work on achieving life balance.
At the end of each day, balance your ‘energy in/energy out’ books by
asking yourself the following: 1) What energy have I expended today?
(energy out) 2) Where did I get the reserves to do all that from?
(energy in). Make sure that the equation is in balance so that if you’ve
given out a lot, you also put back in to yourself in equal measure, to
replenish your reserves. For example you could take ‘time out’ just for
you or indulge yourself.
9. Talk yourself into feeling cool, calm and collected.
Next time you are starting to feel stressed, close your eyes, take two
deep breaths, visualise a big, red stop sign in your mind’s eye, and repeat
the following statement to yourself three times: “I am feeling calm,
serene and at peace with the world.”
10. Whatever it is, ‘release it to the universe’.
If you’re feeling weighed down by something, try this for immediate
tension release. Close your eyes, raise your arms over your head with
hands outstretched and visualise all tension and cares leave your body
through the palms of your hands as you ‘release it to the universe’.
Let stress work for you in positive ways. In the words of Maxwell Maltz,
“tension is to be overcome, not to be overcome by”. Helping Hand Aged
Care’s Successful Ageing program conducts regular courses in relaxation and
stress management, at $3-00 per class. For further information please
contact Margaret Barclay on 8344 2222.