Nearly everyone has times when stress builds up, whether from specific things or just from life in general, to the point where they feel overwhelmed and stressed out.
Knowing how and why you get to that state can help you to avoid it in the first place… and there is a 3 step method that can help you quickly and easily reduce your stress once you’ve already gotten there.
Where Your “Stress Load” Comes From
How easily and often you get stressed out varies widely from person to person. Some people get stressed out easily and often, while other people appear to almost never have that problem. The people who don’t get stressed out often also tend to get over it faster when they do hit that state (which can actually cause even more stress for the people who do get stressed out, as it makes them feel like there is something wrong with them).
You can even move from one extreme to the other as your life goes on, becoming either more or less easily stressed, depending on the events in your life and how you perceive them. If you perceive that you are constantly surrounded by bad things happening, it can make you become stressed out more easily. If you perceive that things in your life are going well (or even just getting better), it can make you less likely to get overwhelmed.
Everyone has a certain “stress load” that they can bear, a load which is measured by the number of things going on in your life plus the negativity of those things, and when you get close to that limit, or even cross it, your quality of life starts going downhill.
Your stress load is not objective… it is affected just as much by how you perceive what you have to do as it is by what you actually do. In other words, you can have a person that does the job of three people that has less of a stress load than someone who only does one small piece of the first person’s job… it all depends on how much they feel like they have going on, and how negative those things are to them.
The negativity of things, in regards to stress load, has three main components: how much you like doing that thing, how much control you feel like you have over it, and how much pressure you feel to get it done. For example, I like to write. When I feel like I can write when and what I want, and that I don’t have a deadline, writing actually has a negative negativity… in other words, it lessens my stress load. On the other hand, even though I like writing, when I have to write something specific, say for work, and it needs done by tomorrow, that increases my stress load by a fair amount… even though I’m doing something I enjoy.
The higher your stress load is relative to your overall limit, the more impact small burdens have. When you are functioning very close to your limit, incredibly small things can send you right over the top.
How To Quickly And Easily Reduce Your Stress Load
There is an easy, quick, and painless way to reduce your stress load. Anyone can do it and see huge benefits the first time they attempt it… and you get even better with practice.
So, with no more ado, here is a 3 step method to reduce your stress:
- Find A Place The first step is to find a place where you can be uninterrupted for a few minutes. This is extremely important, as interruptions don’t simply interfere… they can actually cause you to have more stress than when you started, when the goal is to reduce stress. This place can be anywhere from an office to the bathroom to somewhere outdoors.
- Close Your Eyes And Visualize The second step is to close your eyes and visualize somewhere that is peaceful in your mind. Personally I usually visualize sitting alone on a cliff near the top of a mountain, or the beach, both at either sunrise or sunset. The beach works for a lot of people, but you can use whatever you want, and the same goes for who is there… it’s all a matter of what is peaceful to you.
- Breathe Deeply And Make It Real Now that you have the picture in your head, breathe deeply, breathing in through your nose (and draw the breath down into your stomach, not just into your chest) and out through your mouth. With each breath, try to put your mind more and more solidly in the place that you are visualizing… for the beach, you could add the light at sunrise, the sound of the surf, and the feel of the sand on your feet. It doesn’t really matter what details you add, just that you add to the reality, so that you can mentally sink into the place.
That’s it… you just stay in that state for as long as you can, and then slowly bring yourself back out of it and open your eyes. As long as you are not interrupted while you are doing it, you should notice a substantial change after just five minutes. If you can do it for fifteen minutes, it can sometimes be more refreshing than an entire night’s sleep.
Have any suggestions for other things to visualize, or even other things to do? I’m always looking to learn… so please share.
Want to make today a better day? It's not that hard, it just takes a little prep work.
