Identify Your Stress Triggers and Learn to Overcome Them

A big part of self-improvement is dealing with your emotional and physical stress. Stress not only affects you on a mental level, but a physical one as well. It can be hard to be a better version of yourself when you feel like you don’t have time or energy to actually make improvements. A good place to start is by figuring out what your biggest triggers are, then trying to overcome them. This should help to reduce your overall stress.

Common Stress Triggers

Before you can start getting rid of your stress triggers, you need to know what they are. It helps to first understand what some of the more common stress triggers tend to be. In case you don’t know, a trigger is a person, event, or situation that can cause something to happen. It increases the chances of that thing, which is stress in this case. So if money and financial difficulties tend to trigger your stress (which is very common), then that is you stress trigger. You can also have many different triggers. Here are some of the more common triggers for stress:

* Money and finances
* Work or school
* Personal relationships
* Home and car repairs
* Children and pets
* Caregiving

Finding Your Stress Triggers

You should now be ready to start figuring out what your personal triggers are. These can be some of the aforementioned things that tend to be most common, or other very specific situations. For example, you might find that you get most stressed during a weekday when you don’t get enough sleep, knowing you will be tired the next day, which then creates a snowball of difficult situations the entire day.

In order to find out what your triggers are, start keeping a stress journal. Write in it every time you feel stressed or anxious about something, writing down what you were doing right before it happened. You might have realized a bill is past due, had work hours cut down, had to take your dog to the vet, or gotten in a fight with your teenager. Write down everything for a couple weeks, then take a look at it. Chances are, you will find some similarities.

Tips For Overcoming Your Stress

Make a list of all the triggers you have discovered and try to find ways to reduce them. Some situations, such as stress caused by work, are a little more difficult. However, you can still find ways to relive the stress when you aren’t currently at work. If work or school is where your stress comes from, try to keep it at the office when you leave. That way, you remain relaxed at home. Here are some other tips:

1. Release natural endorphins by getting more exercise. This can help give you a boost in your mood even after a terrible day.
2. Speak to your significant other if you feel that your relationship is causing you stress. Keeping your emotions bottle dup are only going to make ti worse.
3. Get help with your children, pets, or other home issues instead of trying to take on everything yourself.
4. Avoid people that are toxic and tend to cause more stress in your life.

These simple tasks will make a big difference in how you feel each day.