3 Tricks to Decrease Stress
Stress gets a bad wrap in our culture. It’s like the evil villain in a movie that plots ahead of time to overthrow our daily goals and our friendly demeanor (making us grumpy and bad communicators). As if it creeps in where we don’t notice and eventually takes its toll on our health and life, causing us to have a “bad day” or to experience health issues.
In reality, we have all access to this stress building up. It’s not sneaky or a surprise. We have complete and total control of if it settles in and creates issues. Did you know you have this superpower? You have the ability to recognize when and where stress originates and then you have the opportunity to choose whether it is helpful to your productivity or if it’s damaging to you inside and out.
When we feel stress, sometimes it can simply be notifying us that something is important. For example, let’s say my child’s bus is late and we have somewhere to be right now. At that point, I have a choice. I can choose to feel overwhelmed and rushed and worried and blame the bus driver, or I can use that powerful feeling of stress as a notification that I need to adjust our plans.
Can you see the difference? Stress isn’t bad. Holding on to unwanted and unuseful stress, well that is where we get into trouble.
We’ve been conditioned from a young age to hold on to stress in an effort to control it, cover it up so it’s not recognizable, ignore it hoping that it’ll simply just go away, or procrastinate dealing with it for “when we have time.”
In the meantime, this unused stress is damaging and taking its toll (It sounds like we’re back to the villain scenario, right?).
So, what do we do about it? How can we change a pattern that we’ve used our entire lives? Especially in a society that rewards the idea of being stressed?
Here are 3 simple ideas to help you to decrease unwanted stress:
Be aware of your body. What does stress feel like to you? Check right now, I promise you can find some looming right this minute. Start by checking head to toe, where are you feeling tension? Where are you experiencing tightness, clenching, or even discomfort? These are the areas that you’re holding onto unneeded stress. These are the spots your body is conditioned to store that stress as it fluctuates. Be more aware of your body and these subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) tensions that occur throughout the day. Noticing is a huge step in the right direction.
Choose if it’s useful stress. Is this stress notifying you of something you need to do or stop doing? If so, make a plan to get that thing done so that your body doesn’t have to be your perpetual to-do list. Resist the idea that “I’ll feel less stress WHEN…” We often feel like if we can just make it through this week or if we can just get this project done, then we’ll feel great and allow the stress to dissipate. This is not how it works! There’s no free pass you get when you’re done with a project that gives you permission to stop feeling stress. Make a plan of when and how to accomplish what needs to be done and feel better now, while still accomplishing your task.
Connect your breath to your body. Connecting to your breath sounds like a hippie idea, but this is real. Taking time to breath intentionally can make real, measurable changes in your life. It not only can help you to feel where you’re holding stress, it can eradicate that looming and unuseful stress you’ve been holding onto for weeks, months, and even years.
There you are! Repeat these 3 simple steps many times throughout the day to recondition that stress response and soon you’ll be using stress as the useful tool it’s meant to be.
Let me know how it goes!
-Whitney
