In modern day, stress hits us all in life. While a little stress is good as it can keep people focused and motivated, over-stress can lead damage our physical and mental health. As coping with stress, some people often turn to food, alcohol, or drugs; thereby they might suffer from several problems that could balloon out of control. In order to avoid suffering from this condition, you need to find out healthy stress management tips, both at workplace and at home. Here is a list of useful techniques on how to reduce stress that can keep stress monsters at bay.
1. Breathe Deeply
You can take a 5-minute break and concentration instead on your breathing. Just sit up straight, your eyes closed, with a hand on your belly. Then, slowly inhale via your nose, feeling the breath begin in your own abdomen and work its way to the top of the head. After that, you can reverse the process when exhaling through your mouth As deep breathing can counter the impacts of stress and anxiety by lowering blood pressure and slowing the heart rate, then in order to get rid of stress, before experiencing any other complicated methods, you should breathe deeply initially.
2. Meditate
Meditation is a good way to relax body, inside out. Spend several minutes to practice meditation to ease anxiety. In fact, daily meditation could alter the neural pathways of the human brain, making you more resilient to depression and stress. To practice meditation, you can sit up straight with both feet on the ground, then close your eyes, concentration your attention on reciting a positive mantra like “I love myself”, “I feel at peace”. Place one of your hands on the belly for syncing the mantra with the breaths. Just let negative and distracting thoughts out of your mind.
3. Be Present
Be present means that you should slow down yourself. Take about 5 minutes and concentrate on just one behavior with awareness. Then, you will notice how the air feels on your face as you wake up and how your feet feel hitting the ground. In other words, you should enjoy the texture and naturally taste of each bite of food. When you spend time in the moment while focusing on your senses, you will feel less stress and tense.
4. Laugh Out Loud
Laughter is always good for the human health. A good belly laugh will not only lighten the load mentally, but it also lowers cortisol – the stress hormone, and enhances the brain chemicals named endorphins, which help your mood. Lighten up by tuning in to your favorite videos or comedies, reading some comics, chatting with someone who can make you smile.
5. Listen To Soothing Music
It is proven that listening to the soothing music could lower the blood pressure levels, heart rate, and anxiety. Thus, you can create a playlist of songs or nature sounds in order to allow your mind to concentrate on the various melodies, singers or instruments in the piece of music. Blow off the steam by rocking out to upbeat tunes or singing at the top of the lungs.
6. Get Moving
Normally, one of the easy ways to get rid of negative thoughts and stress is to get moving. When having something to do or moving, you will naturally forget all of the chaos in your mind, then giving your body a chance to practice to deal with stress. You do not need to run to get a runner’s high. Instead, you can go for a walk, practice yoga, ease depression, and anxiety by helping your brain release feel-good chemicals. Going for a quick walk, taking the stairs up and down a few flights, or doing some stretching exercises like shoulder shrugs and head rolls are also good ideas to relieve stress.
7. Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence in the workplace has 4 main components, which are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. If you are working a job that has grown increasingly stressful, you could retain a large measure of self-confidence and self-control by acknowledging and practicing emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about communicating with other people in such ways that could draw people to you, repair wounded feelings, overcome differences, and defuse stress and tension.
8. Be Grateful
One of the most recommended tips on how to reduce stress is to keep your mood grateful. In simple words, you should keep a gratitude journal to help you keep in mind all the things that are good and happy in your life. Make use of these journals to savor good experiences like a child’s smile, a good health, or a sunshine-filled day. Whenever you begin feeling stressed, spend some minutes looking through the notes to remind you what actually matters.
