Gardening Is a Constructive Outlet for Anger and Frustration

If you haven’t experienced any anger or frustration today, you probably haven’t gotten out of bed yet. Anger and frustration are guarantees in life because everyday life can be stressful.

Not only can you experience the emotions when something gets off track in your life, but other people can also heap stressful situation on you, which only increases how you feel.

You have to vent. If you don’t vent, then you keep all of that negative emotion trapped inside of you, piling more and more of it together each time you feel angry or frustrated.

What will end up happening is that you’ll explode and vent at the wrong time, in the wrong place or at the wrong person. Or what ends up happening is you look for ways to self-medicate against how you feel.

The most common forms of self medication are through overeating, drinking too much or sleeping too much. There is a healthier way to deal with these emotions. You can find that outlet through gardening.

Spending time in nature this way lets you kick anger and frustration out before they take root and turn into something deeper like depression or anxiety. When you’re spending time in nature through gardening, you’re creating and that outlet is releasing those pent up emotions.

It doesn’t take a lot of space, either. Even a small garden will give you an outlet to relieve your emotions. As you work on the gardening tasks, you’ll notice that you don’t feel as stressed.

When you focus on something else, something relaxing and beautiful, it’s a natural stress reliever which eases anger and frustration. Gardening helps put you in a positive mood.

One of the ways that it does this is because you’re out in the fresh air and sunshine. You get loads of vitamin D, which boosts your mood and improves your health.

When you’re planting and watering and weeding, you lose the connection to the things in life that stress you and instead, you connect to living, growing things that help restore your sense of peace.

Creating a garden can be a haven for you and the sounds of nature calm the thoughts that keep anger and frustration stoked. The garden that you plant can be one of your own design or you can choose one from a design idea book. You can have whatever you want in the garden.

When you spend time in the garden, you’ll discover that it’s not only relaxing, but it’s also fun. An extra benefit of having a garden as an outlet for anger and frustration is that it’s also a form of exercise and exercise can also boost your mood and relieve stress.

5 Herbs That Help You Say Goodbye to Stress

Stress can permeate every area of your life before you know it. Challenges at home and work, not enough money and other life issues can cause anxiety that leads to stress and chronic problems and diseases.

Rather than reaching for potentially harmful prescription medications, cure what ails you with natural herbal remedies. It’s better for you, less expensive and is actually good for you.

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Here are some herbs that can help calm you down without making you sleepy and harming your health:

Lavender – This lovely and healing plant has no side effects that make you sleepy, but can be effective in helping calm anxiety. Studies that compared lavender to the medication, lorazepam, found that lavender was just as effective as the recommended prescription dosage. You can use the lavender oil as an aromatic stress reliever or take an 80 mg supplement once per day.

Passionflower – Studies show that passionflower helps eradicate symptoms of anxiety and depression just as effectively as oxazepam. The passionflower takes a bit longer to take effect, but you won’t suffer from drowsiness as a result. The recommended dose is approximately 45 drops of passionflower extract (90 mg. per day) three times per day.

L-theanine – Although L-theanine isn’t classified as an herb (it’s an amino acid), it’s available in black and green tea or as a supplement. Recent studies show that it’s extremely effective in reducing anxiety and stress, but won’t cause sleepiness. Drink a cup of black tea, which contains approximately 25 mg of L-theanine or green tea (containing approximately 8 mg of L-theanine) once an day for a calming effect.

Ashwagandha – Numerous studies have found that the herb, ashwagandha can be effective in a high-concentration extract to improve feelings of stress and anxiety – without harmful side effects. The usefulness of this herb has been compared to the anti-depressant, lorazepam.

Lemon balm – Another stress-relieving herb which can improve your mood and help you be more alert. Lemon balm extract has been used in numerous studies, finding that 300 to 600 mg reduces stress in most people. Lemon balm may also be used in aromatherapy to reduce stress by adding a teaspoon of dried lemon balm to hot water three or four times per day.

The herbs, valerian and kava, are also effective in producing a calming effect, but they can also make you drowsy, so use them with caution. Keep in mind that depression, anxiety and stress may be from deeper causes than result from work-related or other temporary issues.

Along with herbal therapy, try exercise, breathing techniques and forms of meditation to help reduce your anxiety and its impact on your daily life. Find out more about herbs and other ways to relieve stress by searching online or from the many available books and medical reports available.

Many herbs are easy to grow and can add much to your daily diet and improve the taste of food while keeping you calm and healthy. Explore the types of herbs available and what effect they might have on your mental well-being.

How to Stay Stress-Free as You Get Older

Stress is a part of any life. Even good stress can play games with your mind and body, make you tired and ruin your mindset for enjoying life. As you age, your body isn’t as able as it once was to defend itself against the damage that stress hormones can cause.

Both physical and emotional trauma can be strenuous for seniors and the impact on your body and mind can be difficult to overcome. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but there are ways to ensure you prevent or overcome the stresses that life brings.

Physical stress can come in the form of not being as energetic as you once were – or not being able to fit in clothes you once wore because your waistline is growing. Emotional stress may happen if a spouse passes away, a move occurs that takes you away from friends and family – and much more.

One way you can combat stresses of life as you age is to stay connected to friends and family, choose a form of exercise you can do and enjoy and adhere to a diet rich in the nutrients that will keep you healthy as you age.

When you feel worried or stressed out in your later years, it may be more difficult to overcome. The trick is to stay active, both mentally and physically. It’s thought that high degrees of stress can cause diseases such as cardiovascular – and even Alzheimer’s disease.

The extra cortisol throughout the years may damage a part of the brain called the hippocampus – the area that’s designated for storing and retrieving memories. And, scientific studies have proven that women are more apt to be affected by stress overloads than men.

Seek stress management methods if you are aging and experiencing a great deal of stress in your life. Besides your diet and a regular amount of exercise, maintain a positive mindset and learn to push negative thoughts out of your mind when they first occur.

Stress management techniques may also include becoming involved with a hobby, learning a new language or studying a subject you like by taking classes, becoming involved with a group of people with the same interests and anything else that you may enjoy and that gets your mind off the stress in your life.

Keep in mind that anything which reduces the effects of stress on your body and mind can add years to your life and ensure that you maintain a good quality of life as you age.

7 Steps to Decrease the Stress in Your Life

We all experience stress at one time or another, but we might not be aware of just how much it can harm our health until something serious happens. Stress contributes to inflammation, which is associated with a number of chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease and arthritis.

If you feel like a pressure cooker about to explode most of the time, try the following 7 steps to decrease the stress in your life

1-Meditate.

Meditation is like a mini-vacation for the mind. Sit comfortably and close your eyes. You can then focus on your breathing, or empty your mind of all conscious thought.

2-Try Yoga.

Yoga poses require concentration and therefore allow you to focus on other things besides how much you have to do each day. Sit in a quiet room alone and begin breathing exercises. You can also meditate as part of your practice.

3-Eat Right.

Ensure you eat three healthy meals a day, and skip the sugary snacks, which can trigger a sugar rush. Also try to avoid too much caffeine, which can put you on edge. Definitely avoid diet pills. They will make you jittery and can be bad for the heart.

4- Exercise regularly.

Exercise relieves tension and produces a calming effect. Walking 20 to 30 minutes a day can help you de-stress, especially if you do it at the end of the day to unwind before getting on with the rest of your evening.

5-Sleep right.

Sleep deprivation makes you struggle with the simplest tasks, which can lead to stress. Aim for 8 hours of sleep per night but no more than 9. Avoid sleeping pills as they can alter your chemistry and make you dependent and even more stressed feeling.

6-Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Most of the things you worry about are really not the end of the world. Will you even remember them a year from now? If not, just relax.

7-Talk about the problems you are experiencing.

A problem shared is often a problem halved. Spend quality time with friends or loved ones. If the issue is very serious, try talk therapy with professional. Keeping everything bottled up will only create more stress.

Life is too short, and stress can definitely reduce it further. Nothing is more important than your health in body, mind and spirit. Try one or more of these strategies and see what a difference they can make to your health.

7 Natural Remedies To Deal With Anxiety

If you’re not subject to anxiety than you are one of the lucky ones for as the article below confirms anxiety seems to be everywhere these days:

Anxiety touches nearly everyone in some way. As a disorder, it is the most widespread mental illness in the US, with at least 40 million people suffering; millions more are experiencing situational or temporary bouts of anxiety. Even if you’ve yet to experience it yourself, someone you love may be dealing with anxiety. Unfortunately, until recently, not many people have been ready nor willing to talk about this all-too-common plight.

This past year gave me my first real look into the world of anxiety. After trudging through a particularly difficult time in my life, a therapist let me in on a little secret: I’ve actually had anxiety since I was a kid, and I have just been managing it well. But when times got especially hard last year, I had a much tougher (read: basically impossible) time dealing with my anxiety – not to make a joke out of myself, but it was a meltdown of epic proportions.

Although it’s still not easy to talk about, I want anyone dealing with anxiety to know: it’s okay to talk about it. While there’s no “cure” for anxiety, it is highly treatable – therapy, sometimes coupled with certain medication, can be a powerful treatment. Outside of this, I found a handful natural ways to remedy general anxiety and mitigate stress; these things won’t be a cure-all or an instant fix – especially if you’re dealing with severe levels of anxiety – but they’ll definitely take the edge off and help you feel relaxed and in control again.

Diffuse Oils

Recommended to me by a therapist, my oil diffuser has become one of my treasured possessions. I typically use a combination of eucalyptus, lavender, jasmine, and ylang ylang, all of which have calming properties and make my room smell incredible. I diffuse while I’m at home on the weekends, and every night before I go to sleep. If you have a private office, oil diffusing can be a great way to manage stress and anxiety at work..

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How Yoga Can Relieve Stress

Yoga can relieve stress in a number of ways. If you’re feeling like you’re running as fast as you can just to stand still, it’s time to tune out with the help of yoga in order to relieve your stress and get your life back in balance.

Here are a few of the ways yoga offers relief from stress:

Putting yourself first for a change.
We all have a range of demands upon our time each day, but how much time do we put aside to care for ourselves? Make an appointment on your calendar for yoga each day and treat it as seriously as a doctor’s appointment, and see what a difference it can make to your stress levels.

Peace and quiet.
Yoga studios are usually quiet place that allow you to tune out of all the media that surround you, including your cellphone, email and so on. This can help you feel a lot less frazzled.

Mindfulness and concentration
Once you have tuned out all the media surrounding you, it will be time to look within. You can improve your mindfulness by not trying to multi-task all the time. You will just be concentrating on one thing, a pose, breath work, or meditation. Better concentration means stress will not have as strong an impact upon you. The unexpected or a busy day at work will be a lot less likely to knock you off your stride.

yoga classes

Breath work
When we are stressed, we tend to hold our breath and/or breathe shallowly. Yoga breath work, known as pranayama can help you breathes better in order to clean toxins out of your body and refresh and renew body and mind. Pranayama means to move energy, so if you are feeling like a flat battery or a pressure cooker about to explode, stop letting stress get the better of you by paying attention to your breath.

Meditation
Meditation improves your mental focus and is a mini-vacation from your stress because you are looking within and starting to control the ‘mind chatter’ that most of us live with but which can be exhausting.

If you’ve been feeling so stressed lately it is hard to think straight, try yoga poses, breath work and meditation and see what a difference it can make to your body, mind and spirit.

Healthy Compartmentalization and the Pomodoro Technique

Often when we hear the word ‘compartmentalization’ it is used in a cautionary capacity. That is to say that we’re generally led to believe that compartmentalizing is bad and that we shouldn’t repress any of our feelings.

But just as ‘guns’ aren’t evil so much as the people using them, compartmentalization is actually just a tool that can have psychological benefit when used correctly.

For example? The pomodoro technique and stress management. What am I talking about? Read on and let me explain…

The Benefits of Compartmentalization

No matter how hard you work to improve your lifestyle, you will find that there are always going to be some sources of stress remaining. This is simply a fact of life and there will always be deadlines, concerns and incomplete work.

The key to being able to relax and enjoy a healthy and normal lifestyle then, is knowing how to sometimes to switch off from those worries so that you can actually relax and recover. In other words, you need to learn to leave your work behind you when you log off and head home – otherwise you’ll constantly be stressed, you won’t be able to focus on time with your family and you won’t be able to sleep.

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

Likewise, you can also use this compartmentalization during your working day to be more productive. Case in point: the Pomodoro technique.

Essentially this technique is a tool used to improve productivity, by breaking your working hours up into smaller segments. Here you take a timer and set it for a period of time – normally around 25 minutes – and you work solidly in that time. When it goes off, you then give yourself ten minutes to recover, before going back to work.

This then should allow you to focus with absolute clarity on what you’re doing because you know that you will be getting a short break in 10 minutes. Likewise, it means you should be able to relax completely in those ten minutes without guilt. This then recharges you ready to be more productive following those ten minutes.

But the success of this process all depends on your ability to compartmentalize. The secret to success is to work solidly when you’re working and to switch off completely when you’re relaxing. There’s no point in ‘half working’ or procrastinating – you may as well just be getting some proper relaxation time.

Walk or sit, don’t wobble.

Three Common Causes of Stress in Your Life and How to Deal With Them

One way to tackle stress is to improve your health, your energy levels and your mood. By doing these things, you can help yourself to become more resilient and hardy to stress and you can avoid letting the smaller things bog you down.

But that’s a fairly abstract way to combat anxiety that doesn’t always have an immediate effect.

The other route to take then is to look at the specific causes of stress in your life – the stressors – and to remove them. Some of these will be big and some of them will be small, but all of them contribute to raising blood pressure and making us feel a little less calm and relaxed.

The problem is, many of us can’t put our fingers on exactly what it is that is causing us stress and even when we do, it’s not always obvious how we can deal with the problems.
Read on then and we will look at some of the most common causes of stress and at what you can do to deal with them once and for all…

The Commute

Did you know that the only ‘universal fear’ is things heading towards you? Thus, walking to work and having hundreds of people moving the other way down the street is pretty much a recipe for stress – especially if you’re running late or if you have a long way to travel.
One solution then is to avoid the rush hour. You can do this by speaking with your employer and asking them to give you more flexible working hours: perhaps you could work 8am-4pm for instance instead of 9am-5pm? Alternatively, look at other ways of getting in, like cycling. Or just arrive a little early!

‘Open Loops’

Many of us have lots of niggling jobs and stresses in the back of our minds that contribute to our stress. For instance, you might need to call your relative. Or maybe you have a bill to pay. These are what are known as ‘open loops’ and they can drain us of energy, focus and positivity. The solution is to deal with each of them as soon as possible rather than letting them drag on.

Money

Money is a huge stress for many of us and can cause many a sleepless night.

The solution? Creating a budget. Budgets show us how much we’re losing and where and allow us to formulate a plan to get back on top. What you will often find is that simply cancelling some of your recurring bills and changing your lifestyle a little can make a big difference and help you to get back in the black.

Stress-Free Stress Management Checklist

Looking to improve your stress levels? Ironically, this can end up being stressful in itself! Knowing you have a problem with stress is of course the first step towards getting better but it also means you now know you have a problem… and it means you have a long road stretched out in front of you to ‘recovery’.
If only there were a stress-free way to manage stress… like a checklist for instance!

Do You Have a Stress Addiction?

The first point of order is to consider the possibility that you may have a stress addiction. Unlikely though it may sound, stress addictions are common as we find ourselves unable to pull away from work and other high intensity activities.

* If you ‘thrive under pressure’ and if you can never take time off, you may well have a stress addiction.
* If you feel bored and fidgety when you’re unwinding, you may have a stress addiction
* If your friends and family complain that they never get to see you, this is a sign of a stress addiction
* If you feel constantly ‘wired’ then you may have a stress addiction.
The first step to overcoming stress then is to recognize that you may feel it’s difficult to change these habits: but you must in order to gain freedom from stress.

Identifying Your Stressors

A good place to start when tackling stress is to look at your stressors. Stressors are things that cause stress and these can include things like work and debt. At the same time though, they can also include slightly smaller things in many cases. Common stressors include…

– Impending deadlines
– Calls you need to make and don’t have time for
– Angry bosses
– Awkward colleagues
– Friends or partners who are angry with you
– Arguments
– The commute to work
– Untidy homes
– Health problems
– Inability to pay bills/debt

What you’ll notice is that some of these things are rather small and easy while others are big and abstract. A good place to start is by dealing with the smaller problems that you can tackle more easily. You might also be able to break down bigger problems into smaller issues.

For instance ‘work’ can actually mean:

– Awkward colleagues
– Bad bosses
– Uncomfortable working environments
– Unpleasant commute
– Painful working hours
– Large workloads
– Impending deadlines

So even if you can’t change your job, you may be able to deal with some of these specifics. Where will you start?

Good Habits

A lot of these problems wouldn’t occur if you were to use good stress/time management habits. Here are some good examples:

* Little and often – instead of letting your dishes pile up, try tackling them sooner so that they never build up to that level.
* The pomodoro technique – are you prone to procrastination? Get around this tendency by using the pomorodo technique: segregating your working hours into periods of work and rest using a timer.
* The 80/20 law – if you’re self-employed, you might find that 80% of your work comes from 20% of your clients. Cut the rest.
* Close open loops – don’t let things continue to stress you out over the long term. If you have a call to make, make it sooner and ‘close the loop’.

Lifestyle Changes

You should also apply these lifestyle changes to make stress easier to cope with:

1. Make sure you sleep well by going to bed at a similar time every day, by having 30 minutes to calm down with a book and by relaxing into bed
2. Make sure you give yourself breaks and holidays occasionally! No one should work 365 days a year!
3. Exercise – exercise improves stress and energy in numerous ways.
4. Eat healthily
5. Wake up with a daylight lamp, not a blaring alarm!

Dealing With Acute Stress

Finally, try to learn to deal with acute stress. Some things that can help here include:
* Breathing more slowly which will activate the parasympathetic nervous system
* Learning mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy
* Reminding yourself of why you shouldn’t be stressed
* Removing yourself from the situation

There you have it: you now have all the tools and know-how to begin your move towards a stress-free life!

One Day to Combat Stress

Feeling as though life is getting on top of you? Don’t worry! That’s quite a normal way to feel and according to the statistics, actually a great proportion of us have these feelings a lot of the time.

However, the good news is that you can overcome this stress if you’re willing to just take a break. The problem that many people don’t realize, is that they’re often actually addicted to stress. They don’t like being stressed but at the same time, they can’t help it.

You know that you’re addicted to stress if you find yourself constantly staying late at work, constantly taking on more jobs and feeling awkward or bored when you try relaxing. Sound familiar? If only you would take a break and make it a real break, then you could probably overcome that stress.
Why? Because you could use that one day to put your life in order and to close all your ‘open loops’.

Low Level Stress

While most of us have a few ‘big sources’ of stress, we should be able to cope with these if we could just focus on them. For instance, many of us are stressed by work or by our relationships – but this is still just ‘one source’ of stress and as such should not be crippling.

The problem is that we often have so many other additional sources of stress along with those big ones. For instance, many of us will have calls we need to make, people we need to e-mail and tidying to do. Often we have bills that need paying, admin that needs doing, clothes we need to buy for upcoming events…

The point is, most of us have a huge list of things we need to be doing and this is what makes it so hard for us to cope with the bigger things. This is what makes it feel like we’re filled to brim and like we just can’t manage with everything that’s going on.

These smaller things don’t get done either because we’re tired, because we’re stressed and because our spare time is taken up with those few ‘big’ things.

And this is where the ‘one day’ comes in. Take one day off of work, on your own, and dedicate it to getting everything else straight. That means tidying the house, it means catching up on correspondence, it means sorting out admin – it means doing all those small things that are causing you stress.

Do this, and suddenly life becomes much easier!