Life can be stressful due to a number of causes and factors. To avoid unnecessary complications or problems caused by stress, you must learn to deal with it the right way. Read on to find out how you can deal with extreme stress.
Recognize stress and its reasons
When you realize that you are under extreme stress, take a look around and find out what is causing the stress in you. To deal with stress, you must recognize and accept the factors causing stress in your life. Once you find out the reasons or factors behind your stress, try to eliminate them or remove them from your life. Think and find out how you can change or get control over the stressful situation. If you feel that the stress is being caused by something that is beyond your control, then stop fretting over it immediately. Realize that being upset, anxious or stressed for something that you can not alter or control will only make you miserable and do no good to you. Often anxiety or worry about future causes stress. If that is applicable for you too, then you must try to live in present instead of worrying about future. If you must think about future, then visualize positive outcomes only.
Learn to manage your responsibilities
Having extremely high expectations for self often causes one to set unrealistic goals. This is often the reason behind high stress in a person’s life. Therefore, you must learn to set such realistic goals, which are achievable and practical. Apart from that, you must also learn to manage your work so that you are not stressed because of too many responsibilities that you find difficult to fulfill. Prioritize your work as per the urgency or importance. If you feel you have too many jobs in hand, then work selectively and choose the ones that need your attention immediately. Leave the rest for later time. Learn to say “no” when you feel you have too much to handle already. At no cost should you overload yourself with work and responsibilities. Take as much work that you can manage to do without pushing yourself and stretching your boundaries. Take care of your responsibilities one by one instead of trying to take care of all of them together and stressing yourself. Be organized. Maintain a “To Do” list and update it every day. Avoid procrastination and refrain from seeking perfection. These too cause a lot of undue stress.
Eat right, sleep well, exercise and relax
In a nutshell, take good care of yourself. It is vital to take care of your body and treat it well so that you can deal with extreme stress. So, you must eat healthy and nourishing food and avoid anything that might add up to your stress one way or the other. You must also have sound sleep of adequate hours. Depriving yourself of any of the two would only make you weaker (physically, mentally or both) and would make you more susceptible to stress. Inadequate food or sleep would make you feel tired and with low energy which would make you unfit to deal with stress. Along with these, you must get yourself a little exercise daily. Exercise not only helps to make your body fit but also makes your mind fresh, strong and active. Thus, it would help you fight back your stress problem. Relaxation is irreplaceable and absolutely necessary to deal with stress. What source you use for your relaxation is your choice as it depends on what makes you feel relaxed. However, a massage, meditation, breathing exercises, listening to soft music, etc are good ways to relax.
Bring in positivity instead of taking the escape route
Change your thinking pattern. Do not think of taking the escape route as the way to deal with stress. The truth is, you can not run away from stress no matter how hard you try to do so. So, instead of trying to flee from the stress, face it. Bring in positivity to deal with your stress better. Whenever you feel too stressed and are unable to handle it, just look at your life and think of all the positive things that happened in your life or are present in your life. Remind yourself of your achievements and successes. This would take your mind off from the stressful situation for some time and would fill you with positivity, hope and enthusiasm which would be helpful to deal with your stress. Every morning, start your day by saying something positive to yourself. Indulge in positive self-talk whenever you feel too stressed. Remind yourself of difficult situations that caused stress in the past and which you overcame successfully.
Don’t bottle up the stress
Dealing with stress does not mean keeping the stress within yourself and bottling up your feelings and difficulties. In fact, it is advised that you talk to your friends and family about the stress. Simply talking to others often helps a lot to feel better and relaxed. You might also get good suggestions from your friends or family to deal with the stressful situation and may find out new ways to handle the matter. Along with that, start maintaining a journal. Write about the stress, your difficulties in dealing with it and how you are planning to overcome it, etc in the journal or diary. That would help reduce your stress or anxiety a lot and would make you feel relaxed.
