Many people live in the future. Why? Most people have a future that doesn’t mirror their present so they’d rather be in the future. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because Law of Attraction states, “…that which you give your attention to will manifest in your life.” However, staying in the future means your present is passing you by. The following are some ways to help you live in the now and live a happy life without stress.
1. Don’t think about it.
Your goal is to stop thinking all the time. Go write down things that pop in your mind, this could be exams that are coming up or that visit to grandpa in a few weeks. Then cross off the ones that you are happy about. The first kiss with your lover can be a great memory that you might want to remind yourself of sometimes. Now you’ve a list of bad things you think about all the time. Because you want to stop thinking about them simply make a pact with yourself to do something stupid each time your head wanders off to one of the subjects on your list. This can be shaking your head really hard or even do 3 push-ups. Warning: Be reasonable and always try to forget if it comes up again.
2. Do Yoga and exercises.
Doing daily exercising will get you in great shape and stops your head from wandering off. Don’t say to yourself I can’t exercise until I finished this, because that’s exactly what you want to get rid of.
3. Avoid daily routine
We like to plan our days so that we don’t hit any surprises. But there’s nothing wrong with some variation or on-the-fly decisions. Donate a dollar to the collector in front of your grocery story. Smile randomly when you see a new store opening up or a beautiful tree. They’re resources you can use for a very long time. You can visit the store to buy new things, and the tree will always be there for your viewing pleasure – and oxygen.
4. The past and future is a reflection of the present.
The most important thing is to do good in the present. Great memories will bloom and future health and wealth can be created. With that in mind it’s only natural to be your best in the present. Really enjoy what you’re doing. Writing or watching television; find the good things in your current activity. It’s the only thing you should worry about.
5. If you don’t like the present, change it.
You can’t change the past but you can change the future. And that’s most important. If you’re not happy with something in your life currently then change it. Want to be a architect? Go study architecture. Feeling lonely? Make a MySpace profile and meet new people. The only thing that is important is that your happy about the present. Only then your future is as bright as can be.
Practice living in the now and know that by accessing the power of now, you can enjoy even more success than ever before.
Whether you hold a full-time job or work as a freelancer, work from office or work from home, stress is a real issue that every working professional has to deal with sooner or later. As the work culture gets increasingly complicated and employees are expected to work more for less; it’s now more important than ever to find your own recluse.
Relax, if you’ve been feeling stressed out lately from all the workload, just follow these simple tips for a quick fix.
Tips to reduce work stress
1. Listen to music: If your workplace permits listening to music during working hours, plug-in the headphones and tune in for some light, acoustic music. Not only does relaxing music ease your brain by taking away stress, but it can also give you some much-needed motivation to complete the tasks in hand. Classical symphonies, relaxing OSTs and acoustic sound all work wonders.
2. Take a break: With the constant pressure coming from the weight of the world around us, it’s quite easy to feel bogged down and depressed. This is why one must break away from work life once in a while even if it sounds implausible. A break can give you a fresh perspective on things and how to get things done, which is essential for career growth and success. Don’t be afraid; just take a break and go someplace where you always wanted to go before.
3. Smile and laugh a lot: Now before you brand us crazy for asking you to laugh for no reason, just hear us out. Science has found that our mental health and brain function is interconnected to facial expressions. When people feel stressed out, a lot of stress is held in their facial muscles, so smiles and laughs can relieve some of that held tension and make you feel relaxed.
4. Exercise: No, we’re not going ask you to abandon work to visit the gym for a 40-minute lifting session. All you have to do is some simple stretches in between work to feel refreshed and relaxed. You can even go for a 10 min walk, do some pushups, or dance around when no one’s looking to bring back peace of mind.
5. Call in social support: Working, especially from home, can get very lonely at times due to lack of co-workers. In that case, it’s always good to call a friend to share your feelings and concerns. Involving friends and family within regular work schedules can relieve stress, improve trust, and benefit relationships in more ways than one.
Donâ’t think too much; just try out these simple tips the next time you get stressed to feel the difference.
Adrenal fatigue is a condition which is becoming increasingly prevalent, but at the same time is under-diagnosed. Relatively few people are aware that this condition is responsible for many of the fatigue-related symptoms they deal with on a daily basis. Prolonged or chronic stress is the major cause of adrenal fatigue.
An individual suffering from adrenal fatigue may find that even after sleeping for several hours the symptoms of fatigue can still be felt. It can seem that no amount of sleep or relaxation can overcome the kind of fatigue that a person who has adrenal fatigue experiences. One tell-tale sign of having adrenal fatigue can be a reliance on coffee and other stimulants to be able to get through the day and accomplish regular daily tasks.
Unfortunately, the consequence of adrenal fatigue does not just stop at feeling constantly fatigued and worn-out. The effects of chronic and prolonged stress can be very damaging to the body. In learning how to restore proper adrenal function you may be able to greatly increase your enjoyment of living.
Prolonged Stress Exhausts Your Adrenals
The adrenal glands play a critical role in human health, well-being and survival. Ideally, in times of stress the adrenals release hormones in amounts proportional to the perceived threat or need. These hormones trigger further hormone releases that temporarily enable super-powers in the person, enabling them to think and act faster and stronger than normally.
For health to be maintained it is necessary for these hormones to be dissipated by physical activity, followed by a critical rest period to enable the system, especially the adrenal glands, to fully recover. Unfortunately, in our modern lives this set of circumstances rarely occurs in our daily lives.
More often, the triggers that set off the ‘fight or flight’ response are emotion-based responses which lack a corresponding physical release. Worse still, there is usually no respite period before the next episode. Simply put, this is chronic stress.
Chronic stress causes prolonged production of adrenaline and cortisol which leads to exhaustion of the adrenals and depletion of these hormones. The adrenal glands cannot keep on producing stress hormones indefinitely. Eventually their output diminishes and constant fatigue sets in.
Stress Damage is System-wide
Each organ and every system in the body will suffer from the profound effects of malfunctioning adrenal glands. Once your adrenal glands are compromised, your body’s ability to metabolize fats, carbohydrate and protein will also be compromised. This occurrence also causes the depletion of specific nutrients that are much needed by the body for its optimal functioning.
Your body’s electrolyte balances, cardiovascular system, your heart and sex drive are also largely affected. These changes occur in degrees over time and may not be noticed in isolation. Eventually the adrenal depletion reaches a stage where it is impossible to remain unaware of a problem, usually a feeling of constant fatigue and being run-down. It is also usually noticed at this time that the person is more susceptible to infection and injury than they ever remembered previously being.
Exposing yourself to prolonged or chronic stress forces the body to continually produce stress hormones thereby constantly keeping it in panic mode. This becomes the accepted ‘norm’ and may go largely unnoticed. When the body is always in survival mode it is unable to effectively perform other important functions such as digesting food, fighting infections, regulating hormones, improving blood flow, etc.
In this state, the heart is constantly pumping harder and beating faster. The arteries will also be constricting most of the time while the body’s metabolism is using lean muscle as fuel for energy each time the body is subjected to stress.
Need for Repair
If you are suffering from adrenal fatigue it is first necessary to reduce or eliminate the stress causing it, or learn to deal with it more effectively to reduce the response to stressors. Then changes need to made to both diet and lifestyle, particularly rest patterns, to enable the adrenals to repair themselves. Unfortunately, as the damage did not occur overnight, neither will be the recovery, which can take up to two years.
Stress is such an innocuous word for all the trouble it can cause. Did you know that stress can cause serious medical issues like cancer, obsessive compulsive disorder and clinical depression? Sure, that seems like common sense. But there is a whole world of things to know about stress. Here are six things you didn’t know.
Beneficial and Not So Beneficial Types of Stress
Did you ever think you’d come across a type a stress that’s good for you? This magical, helpful stress is called eustress. You need that kind of stress to have a healthier, more fulfilling and exciting life. Have you ever been on one of those amusement park rides that slowly carries you up, up, up a gigantic tower? You know that ride that pauses for a breathless second at the tippy top and then drops you back down to earth? Well, eustress develops when you do things like that. Or when you go sky diving, play laser tag and even when you fall in love.
You Can Stop Your Stress Reaction Right Now
When it’s time to fight or flee, your body produces the necessary biochemical reactions to get you in top physical shape. If you remain in that state and don’t calm yourself down right away, the stress could have an adverse effect on your health. In order to train yourself back down from that flight-or-flee high, you can practice stress relief techniques like meditation or breathing techniques.
Even Small Amounts of Stress Can Affect Your Health
Large amounts of stress can cause serious issues, as previously mentioned. Smaller amounts and shorter periods of stress, likewise, can wear down your immune system. The likelihood of developing an illness is greater when you are under stress, even if the stresses are relatively small. Your brain and body react the same whether the stress is life threatening or a simple annoyance that upsets you.
You Can Prevent a Significant Amount of Stress in Your Life from Occurring
This one is pretty easy, so without mincing words, here are some ways you can prevent high levels of stress:
Healthy diet
Close, meaningful friendships
Regular exercise
Relaxation and meditation
Positive outlook
Fun activities
Professional help, as necessary
Not Everyone Experiences Stress in the Same Way
We are all unique, born with different qualities and personalities. Two people may experience the same thing, but perceive it in different ways. What stresses one person out doesn’t necessarily stress out someone else. The stressor might be the same, but the external event isn’t what causes stress—the reaction to the stressor is. You can change how you react to stressors by practicing different stress management techniques, such as mediation.
By Imagining Your Stress Gone, It Can Be
And finally, banishing the stress! Such tricks as guided imagery and visualizations actually help you think away your stress. Here are some other ways to imagine away your stress:
Positive self-talks
Journaling
Art or other creative outlets
Group talks with friends
Meditation
Try a couple or all of those techniques to see which one better helps you banish your stress.
Picture this: It’s a work day, just like any other day. As soon as you wake up, swing your legs over the side of the bed, your stress begins. You start by standing up on a LEGO (ouch!!). How it got in your room, you’ve no idea.
Next your tooth brush falls on the floor, butter side down. The next 10 minutes are spent de-grossifying it. It doesn’t get better from there.
You’re out of milk; no breakfast. You’re out of gas in your car; have to take the bus. You get to work and your boss is in one of her moods. Now the rest of your shift is touch and go. Ride the bus home, have a mediocre dinner, go to bed late, and start it all over again.
After all that, your stress levels have reached Mach 5. And you feel horrible. You may think this example is a huge exaggeration, but many of us spend our days dealing with one little stress after another, just like in the example.
Now true or false: stress only affects your emotions? False. Stress can and will affect your entire body. It affects you physically, mentally, emotionally and behaviorally. It can cause all of these issues:
Insomnia
Fatigue
Obesity
Lowered sex drive
Reduced mental faculties
Muscle pain
Lowered immunity
Migraines
Hair loss
Depression
Acute anxiety
Digestive disorders
Strokes
Diabetes
And many other issues that vary in severity. Forty-five percent of adults suffer injurious health effects from stress, such as the ones mentioned above. Also, 75 to 90 percent of all doctor visits pertain to stress-related ailments. Is that persistent tension in your neck still bothering you? Are you still waking up irritable? A lot of stress might be the cause.
Now, whether the stress components in your life are big or small, real or imaginary, your body reacts the same way. From sun up to sun down, many people can attest to experiencing several stressors a day. Each stress reaction produces 1,400 biochemical events in your body, which is a negative chain reaction on the molecular level.
If you suffer from, let’s say, 50 medium-sized stressors every day, your body gets attacked by a battalion of 70,000 biochemical warriors that don’t quit.
Additionally, when you experience acute stress, the adrenal glands produce adrenaline and cortisol, the “stress hormone.” That hormone regulates the changes to the body brought on by stress:
Blood sugar levels
Fat, protein and carbohydrate metabolism to maintain blood glucose
Anti-inflammatory actions
Blood pressure
Heart and blood vessel tone and contraction
Central nervous system activation
So when those biochemical warriors go into battle, your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, pupils dilate, liver releases glucose and blood flows to your muscles increase.
Lastly, stress is linked to the six leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.
If stress can be reduced, either through meditation or another relaxation technique, you will be happier, healthier and hopefully stress-free. The first step to curing stress is to recognize that you have stress.
Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches us to break down our fears into their underlying beliefs. We are afraid of X because we think Y might happen. Often once we express our fears in these terms, we find that actually our fears are unfounded and very unlikely to come to fruition.
But there’s another way we can challenge our limiting beliefs and get some more perspective and that’s to ask the simple question ‘why does it matter?’.
Why Does it Matter?
A lot of us are anxious about certain things happening but actually, if we keep asking why it matters, we’ll reveal to ourselves that the worst case scenario actually isn’t that bad at all.
Of course this doesn’t work if you’re trying to overcome a fear of heights, or a fear of snakes (why does it matter? Because I might die!) but it works for all manner of other things.
Examples of Asking Why
Let’s take the common social anxiety that almost everyone experiences to some degree. Unless you were the number 1 jock or prom queen at school, chances are you’ve grown up with some element of trepidation speaking to other people. You maybe ask what they’re thinking about you and what will happen if they don’t like you. Ironically, this is then what often causes you to make mistakes or to sound unconfident.
But now ask yourself why it matters. Why does it matter what a stranger thinks? Are you going to see them again? If not then it hardly matters what impression you make on them! Are they a friend? If so, then they’re probably not friends with you because of how good you are at speaking in public! Is it someone you fancy? In that case, they’re probably just as nervous and hearing a bit of stuttering is only likely to be endearing to them. If not, then they possibly aren’t the person for you anyway!
You can do the same thing with any number of other anxieties. Stressed about being in debt? Ask yourself why it matters. Worst case scenario your home might be repossessed. Not ideal, sure, but as long as you have a job you’ll be able to live in rented accommodation. Don’t have a job? Most of us know a parent we can stay with. Don’t have that? The council will look after you.
Again, not ideal but it’s certainly something you could survive. Once again, that worst case scenario actually isn’t that bad and you shouldn’t let it cripple you!
If you’re trying to breathe and stay calm in more stressful situations and generally remain cooler under pressure, then you’ll often be approaching the idea of stress as something ‘bad’ that you need to ‘fix’ or address.
Actually though, this is the wrong way to think about stress and it’s even responsible for some of the issues associated with it. The perception is that stress makes us less confident, less able to make decisions and generally weaker.
But the reality couldn’t be further from that. In fact, stress actually makes us much stronger and also improves our performance in various other ways too.
How Stress Makes You Stronger
When you’re stressed, it triggers your body to release neurotransmitters and hormones which include adrenaline, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. Together, these contribute to pain relief, an increased heart rate, dilation of the blood vessels, increased blood viscosity and tension in the muscles. Blood and oxygen are directed away from the digestive system and immune system and instead they’re directed to your muscles and brain. This makes you faster and stronger and therefore better able to escape danger or confront it head on.
What’s more is that it improves your focus and alertness and improves your ability to act quickly and respond to threats. If you’re in a fight then, or an athletic contest – stress can actually help you to perform better and achieve more.
How Stress Motivates Us
At the same time, stress has the positive effect of motivating us. An example of this might be when we’re studying, at which point it’s often stress that makes us revise more or double check our work. The same goes for interviews and any other scenario where the outcome relies on us putting in work. This type of positive motivating stress is called ‘eustress’ and people tend to be more successful if they experience this to a good degree.
The key then is not to completely eradicate stress but rather to control it. By being able to dictate when you become stressed and how much stress you experience, you can thereby improve your ability to stay while at the same time tapping into the heightened strength, speed and intelligence that comes from a stress response.
Next time you find yourself feeling stress, don’t try to fight it (which will only make you more stressed ironically) but instead lean into it and channel it!
If you’re looking to improve your ability to stay calm and collected under pressure, then there are numerous different techniques you can use. One of the most potent is to learn to control your breathing, which can immediately help you to feel calmer and avoid being pushed over into the stress response.
In this post, we’ll be looking at some breathing techniques you can employ to stay calm, as well as looking at some other techniques you can use.
Equal Breathing
Equal breathing is a technique from yoga, which essentially requires you to breathe in and out through your nose. While doing this, you maintain your breath for an equal amount of time on the in-wards and out-wards breaths. So you might breathe out for 4 seconds and then breathe in for four seconds.
This helps you to empty your lungs and fill them with fresh oxygen. What’s more, the slow and deep breathing will allow you to trigger your ‘rest and digest’ state which is similar but slightly different to the ‘fight or flight’ state and is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. This is a great way to stave off a anxiety response.
Breathing From the Stomach
Another breathing technique to try is simply to breathe from the stomach as we are naturally designed to do. If you try breathing right now and note whether your stomach or chest moves first, you may well find that you breathe by leading with your chest. This limits the amount of oxygen you can take in with each breath and that can increase stress.
Instead, breathe by first allowing your abdomen to expand. Use your transverse abdominis and expand your abdominal cavity. This will allow your diaphragm to drop into that space, opening up your lungs. You can then follow by expanding your chest and you’ll have more space in total to take in more oxygen.
Power Positions
Power positions are positions that have been shown by research to trigger the production of testosterone and other positive, stress-fighting hormones. One is the ‘victory pose’. If you simply stand with your arms above you in a ‘V’ shape, as though you had just won a competition, this will increase your production of testosterone, helping you to feel more confident and more driven. Of course it’s best to do this somewhere private before the event you’re nervous about!
If you’re looking for a way to stay calm in a tense situation, for a way to be focussed when all you want to do is relax or a way to control your anger – then CBT is something you should definitely consider.
CBT stands for ‘Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’ and is essentially a set of tools used for psychotherapeutic interventions when treating anxiety disorders and other psychological conditions. This also happens to be the preferred method of therapy among most health institutions today.
The best bit? As well as being highly effective and proven in countless studies, CBT is also very simple to teach and can even be explained ‘remotely’. Here we will take a look at what CBT entails, why it’s so powerful and why it’s very much worth learning.
How CBT Works
CBT is essentially the natural evolution from behaviorism. Behaviorism is a school of psychology that views all of our behaviors and beliefs as being learned responses that have been trained via conditioning. Behaviors that have been rewarded become reinforced and we perform them more often. Behaviors that have been punished become less common.
CBT takes this principle and adds an additional cognitive element – showing that we can actually reinforce a behaviour through the way we think. If we have anxious thoughts about an action for instance, then we can find ourselves actually enforcing that association to the point of even developing a phobia. We don’t actually have to experience anything bad – our belief and predictions alone are enough to create the association!
The same can also work in reverse though and if you logically break down your fears, explain to yourself why you shouldn’t be afraid of them then eventually you can completely remove those phobias.
An Example
So how might this work?
A good example is a social phobia, which can be created through the maladaptive belief that you’re going to embarrass yourself, that you’re going to faint or that perhaps you’re in some kind of danger. It is your job then to remove this association through CBT using techniques such as ‘thought challenge’. Thought challenging involves assessing just how realistic a fear is in a logical way and often you’ll be able to disprove your own fears to yourself.
You can then formulate these new thoughts as positive affirmations and actually talk yourself up before big events. Eventually, this can be enough to complete remove the phobia or anxiety – and it’s something that anyone can practice alone at home!
Recent studies indicate that gardening for only 30 minutes a day, once per week, can reduce stress levels – and fatigue. The immediate and lasting health benefits of this finding substantiates that gardening is an activity we all should consider for our health and mental well-being.
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If you’ve ever taken an impromptu walk in the park or down a tree-lined lane, you know how you felt afterward. Likely, you were invigorated and thinking good thoughts rather than focusing on stressful subjects.
A garden can provide that mental well-being and possibly add years to your life. Studies have proven the fact that gardening is good for the body and the soul and cities are incorporating community gardens in their design plan to keep the population healthy and provide an outlet for stress and mental fatigue.
If you’re not an avid outdoor enthusiast, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t have to spend large chunks of time tending to a garden. Choose a gardening method, such as containers, that will keep you reaping the benefits gardening has to offer, but that you devote less time to.
You may live a life that makes it difficult to garden because of the time it takes, but there are methods where you can get the same benefits as avid gardeners who spend hours per week in their garden settings.
One method of gardening that lets you devote as much or little time as you like is planting in containers. You can make it even easier by setting up watering systems such as the drip method.
If you’re a beginner gardener, you’ll want to begin with easy-to-grow plants. Choose from a wide array of flowers to add beauty to your outdoor and indoor spaces or reap the health benefits from a vegetable garden.
Any gardening store can help you with the basics. Don’t invest in a lot of equipment and exotic plants until you find out if gardening is something you enjoy. Most of the basic gardening tools are inexpensive and will last a long time if cared for.
There are so many aspects of gardening to enjoy and that will provide stress-reduction and boost your health. Simply being outside in the fresh air and sunshine can help lift your mood, fill your lungs and flex your muscles.
Another healthy aspect of gardening is the beauty and peace it provides. If you have the space, carve out an area for a chair and perhaps a water feature that offers peaceful sounds.
After your gardening chores are done, take some time to relax and enjoy the sounds, sights, smells and touch that your efforts have provided. It’s amazing that only 30 minutes of gardening, one day per week can provide that much pleasure to your life.
Vegetable gardening goes beyond helping you feel less stress and can help you eat a healthy diet by providing you with fresh, chemical-free food that you can enjoy right out of your garden.
If you want to try your hand at gardening, but don’t know where to start, begin online with some tips and ideas about how to cultivate a garden where you can devote little time, but reap all of the benefits that gardening has to offer.