Stress

• Everybody has their own ways of taking their minds off of things. A good way to recognize them is to think about your interests and hobbies and in doing so you can figure out something in those categories that you will enjoy doing that will take your mind off of things.
• Think about the things you loved or still loved to do then think about the options and see which one you feel like doing.

Just practice the four roots to self care to manage and cope with stress. I created an acronym that encompasses these four research proven methods to reduce stress.

S= Serenity Serenity is the opposite of stress. Learn a few simple practices that scientific research has proved lowers blood pressure, lowers your heart rate, gives you an immune boost and reduces the stress hormones in your body. These practices also help your body produce calming healing hormones that de-stress the mind and body. Do any of these serenity practices for just 2-4 minutes to reduce stress right away. I love all the apps found in the app store for all of the practices listed below, (short meditations, affirmation apps, music you love, and apps with beautiful relaxing nature and sounds, and guided imagery apps).

1. Do a short meditation. Over a thousand scientific studies prove practicing a relaxation response creates health benefits and reduces stress.
2. Repeat a positive affirmation. Research shows that repeating a positive affirmation when you are stressed reduces the production of stress hormones.
3. Music. Research reveals listening to music creates calming hormones in the body. Download to your iPhone your favorite relaxing music and listen to it for a few minutes when you are stressed and it will create calm.

E=Exercise Research tells us exercise produces relaxing hormones such as endorphins and can be as effective as antidepressants in reducing stress and depression.

1. Walking. Simply going for a walk instantly reduces stress and helps create calm in the body.
2. Yoga. We have emerging research on the stress reducing power of yoga. Memorize 5 simple yoga stretches.
3. Family exercise. Keep a basketball hoop or badminton net in the back yard. When the family is stressed over some situation, get outside and play or go for a walk.

L=Love Sharing your stress and concerns helps the mind and body relax and renew. Research tells us there is a positive relationship between having community and our health. Pioneering cardiologist Dr. Dean Ornish says, “Isolation kills, community heals.

1. Meet with a friend, coworker, or friends at least once a week for a meal. When we have a physical connection with others we produce healthy hormones and they relax us.
2. Get in a group. Create a study group, a card group, an exercise group or some group around some interest you have. When you have friends that support you there is less stress in your life. lunch once a week around a common interest: a book club, gardening, parenting, investing or other interests.
3. Phone support. Keep at least three best friends, family or a coworker on your phone list. When you are stressed call a friend.

F=Food Food is medicine. Food is healing. Food regulates your moods, your sleep, and your health. Stress can be regulated by what you eat.

1. Eat breakfast.
2. Omega 3.s. Research shows omega 3's help with anxiety, stress and depression.
3. Vitamin B6. B6's increase the serotonin in your body.
   

Introduction to Stress Management

A lot of research has been conducted into stress over the last hundred years. Some of the theories behind it are now settled and accepted; others are still being researched and debated. During this time, there seems to have been something approaching open warfare between competing theories and definitions: Views have been passionately held and aggressively defended.

What complicates this is that intuitively we all feel that we know what stress is, as it is something we have all experienced. A definition should therefore be obvious…except that it is not.

Hans Selye was one of the founding fathers of stress research. His view in 1956 was that "stress is not necessarily something bad - it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental." Selye believed that the biochemical effects of stress would be experienced irrespective of whether the situation was positive or negative.

Since then, a great deal of further research has been conducted, and ideas have moved on. Stress is now viewed as a "bad thing", with a range of harmful biochemical and long-term effects. These effects have rarely been observed in positive situations.

The most commonly accepted definition of stress (mainly attributed to Richard S Lazarus) is that stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that "demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize." In short, it's what we feel when we think we've lost control of events.

This is the main definition used by this section of Mind Tools, although we also recognize that there is an intertwined instinctive stress response to unexpected events. The stress response inside us is therefore part instinct and part to do with the way we think.

Some of the early research on stress (conducted by Walter Cannon in 1932) established the existence of the well-known "fight-or-flight" response. His work showed that when an organism experiences a shock or perceives a threat, it quickly releases hormones that help it to survive.

In humans, as in other animals, these hormones help us to run faster and fight harder. They increase heart rate and blood pressure, delivering more oxygen and blood sugar to power important muscles. They increase sweating in an effort to cool these muscles, and help them stay efficient. They divert blood away from the skin to the core of our bodies, reducing blood loss if we are damaged. As well as this, these hormones focus our attention on the threat, to the exclusion of everything else. All of this significantly improves our ability to survive life-threatening events.

Not only life-threatening events trigger this reaction: We experience it almost any time we come across something unexpected or something that frustrates our goals. When the threat is small, our response is small and we often do not notice it among the many other distractions of a stressful situation.

Unfortunately, this mobilization of the body for survival also has negative consequences. In this state, we are excitable, anxious, jumpy and irritable. This actually reduces our ability to work effectively with other people. With trembling and a pounding heart, we can find it difficult to execute precise, controlled skills. The intensity of our focus on survival interferes with our ability to make fine judgments by drawing information from many sources. We find ourselves more accident-prone and less able to make good decisions.

There are very few situations in modern working life where this response is useful. Most situations benefit from a calm, rational, controlled and socially sensitive approach.

In the short term, we need to keep this fight-or-flight response under control to be effective in our jobs. In the long term we need to keep it under control to avoid problems of poor health and burnout.

There are very many proven skills that we can use to manage stress. These help us to remain calm and effective in high pressure situations, and help us avoid the problems of long term stress. In the rest of this section of Mind Tools, we look at some important techniques in each of these three groups.

Keeping a Stress Diary or carrying out the Burnout Self-Test will help you to identify your current levels of stress, so you can decide what action, if any, you need to take. Job Analysis and Performance Planning will help you to get on top of your workload. While the emotionally-oriented skills of Imagery, Physical Techniques and Rational Positive Thinking will help you change the way you see apparently stressful situations. Finally, the article on Anger Management will help you to channel your feelings into performance.

This is a much-abridged excerpt from the 'Understanding Stress and Stress Management' module of the Mind Tools Stress Management Masterclass. As well as covering this material in more detail, it also discusses:

• Long-term stress: The General Adaptation Syndrome and Burnout
• The Integrated Stress Response
• Stress and Health
• Stress and its Affect on the Way We Think
• Pressure andPerformance: Flow and the 'Inverted-U'

These sections give you a deeper understanding of stress, helping you to develop your own stress management strategies for handling unique circumstances. Click here to find out more about the Stress Management Masterclass and here to visit the Stress.MindTools.Com site, which has many more articles on stress management.

The first of these articles shows you how to keep a stress diary - an important technique for understanding the most important sources of stress in your life. To read this, click 'Next article' below. Other relevant destinations are shown in the "Where to go from here" list underneath.