Many people have little control over their responsibilities at work, their financial situation or their personal relationships, at least over stretches of time. Stress is often an inescapable part of life for many, whether for a few months or a few years.
It’s important to actually address stress, however, and not simply grin and bear it. Stress does more than affect your health in the long term. It can sap your energy right now, and leave you with little left for your work or your relationships.
Look for stress-relief right away
Many people who let their stress overwhelm their lives do so because they have trouble with the idea of stress relief — any method that offers mere symptomatic relief seems to not be worth their while. Nothing but a full solution to their problems interests them. Quick stress relief, however, isn’t meant to be a Band-Aid. Rather, it’s meant to keep stress from causing damage right now.
Not every stress-relief method works for everyone. For some people, hitting the gym works, and for others, it’s yoga. Over the past two years, coloring for adults has been a worldwide movement, and it has won the approval of psychologists as an excellent way to relieve stress.
If you’d like to try to see if coloring beautifully designed images works for you, all you need to do is to check out a free coloring book app for Android smartphones, or for other platforms. These can be a great way to distract your mind and have it focus on something pleasant.
Change the way you see things
Some people worry endlessly about a problem until they find a solution, and others are able to simply do the work that’s needed, while they refuse to worry. They know that worrying doesn’t accomplish anything. If keeping from worrying doesn’t come naturally to you, you could find a cognitive behavioral therapist willing to help you. Many, however, simply do it on their own, with careful mental training. It just takes the ability to truly internalize the idea that worrying doesn’t help anything.
Don’t neglect your friends
Spending time with people is one of nature’s best stress-busting tricks. If you can manage it, scheduling time with family, friends, coworkers or even in community activities like sports or volunteering, can significantly help in getting your mind off things that worry you the most. When you take time off doing an activity that truly engages you, you bring new energy back to your regular life, and you manage to do better, even as you avoid burnout.
If you find it hard to believe that spending time with people will actually help, you can experiment with a few social activities, just to see what they do for you. You need to make a real attempt, however, making sure you simply don’t think of your regular concerns the whole time.
See if you can reorder those priorities
If you’ve always put your responsibilities first and your personal and spiritual needs last, you should try to see if you can perform a reordering, at least in some areas. For instance, if you always wanted to explore your creative side learning to play an instrument or learning a martial art, you should get out and do it. These may actually add to the pile of responsibilities you have on your plate, but it could actually lower your stress. Deep inside, you may know that you’ve been neglecting your needs, and it could be one possible cause for your stress. Addressing it could be a lasting solution.