Stress Reducer Tips

While appropriate stress is vital to keep us alive and thriving, excessive stress or what some term “toxic stress” can be detrimental to our health. Keeping stress under control is vital to healthy living. Here are a few tips:

1. Don’t over schedule – it is easy to get our schedule filled up as we add more and more responsibilities to our lives. Learn to say “no” to some things and try to remove things that you maybe don’t need to do off your schedule.
2. Be realistic – be careful when trying to do everything perfect or expecting everyone around you to be perfect. We have to realize we and everyone else is not perfect. Don’t put more stress on yourself or others than needed.
3. Get enough sleep – while it may seem like we can function with less sleep, which is what we often times do when we don’t follow tip #1. Parts of your brain actually shut down when you are lacking sleep. You are functioning, just not at your fullest level, which puts more stress on the parts that are functioning.
4. Treat your body well – regular appropriate exercise is a significant component to reducing stress. Be careful not to go to the opposite side of no exercise, excessive exercise can actually lead to increasing stress. Also a healthy diet is important to decrease the stress to your body trying to function. You wouldn’t expect a car to work very well if you didn’t use good gas for the engine.
5. Watch what you’re thinking – your attitude, outlook and thoughts influence biological functions of your body. People with what is called a “growth mindset” have better control of their stress as compared to “fixed mindset” people. Growth mindset people see that their abilities and situations will grow and change, like a muscle if you work on it. They also accept criticism because they know it will make them better in the long term. Know that with challenges comes some failure but failure is a necessary part of growth and change.