Quick Fixes – Easy to do anywhere
Everyone experiences stress at some point, sometimes it’s just a short period and is recognisable as stress caused by an event or series of events. At other times feeling stressed is more unfortunately part of your everyday life as a result of job, family or any other of the many demands that you have on your time and energy. In these circumstances it is extremely important to schedule some time to de-stress and look after yourself. The best antidote to a stressful lifestyle is ultimately self-care.
Living a lifestyle of multiple demands any or all of which can cause stress it becomes absolutely vital to develop and improve your resilience to stress. Developing resilience can be a combination of many factors. Some of which may include re-evaluating lifestyle choices, work commitments, thought processes, values, etc., etc. These ideas may be a bit of a leap and something to consider in the future but right now, here is a list of quick fixes that will give you a respite. These quick fixes are all valid and workable, some may work better for you than others. Try them all and start the process of readjustment and self-care now.
Easy and Quick fixes to rebalance and increase your resilience.
1. Walk barefoot in grass: surprisingly simple and works very well to ground your thoughts and hyper energy. Even in the cold and wet walking barefoot in grass can be invigorating.
2. Drink a glass of water: the process of stress in the body is largely metabolic with multiple chemical and hormone reactions all triggering different physical responses. These physical responses all require water and so it is very easy to become dehydrated when stressed. Dehydration itself can make the symptoms of stress worse as well as have on-going effects on general health and well-being.
3. Throw a ball from hand to hand in a rhythmical fashion: pass the ball as swiftly as you can from hand to hand gradually extending the distance between your hands. Achieving a rhythm is comforting and the use of both left and right hands has the benefit of synchronising left and right brain. When concentrating for long periods of time on similar or the same tasks, we use only one half of our brain which can become tired and when that happens we start to make mistakes with concentration lapses. Strangely enough sometimes when we are up against a deadline the best thing to do is take a break, engage both halves of the brain and refresh.
4. Take regular breaks: even when up against those deadlines make sure to take regular breaks. As human beings we can only concentrate in a peak focussed way for relatively short periods of time the average being 45 minutes. We can push through this but productivity decreases. After 45 minutes of epic focus on a task or problem, we generally need to take a step back and allow both halves of our brain to integrate and process. Have you ever knawed at a problem, focussed on it for quite a while only to walk away in defeat and seemingly give up? And when we walk away isn’t it curious how often the answers come to us when we come back? Or pop into our mind when we are doing something completely different? Left brain and right brain working together and processing and integrating information during a break and at the unconscious level.
5. Breathe: take some deep full lung breaths, hold on the in and out and breath and make sure to breathe through your nose, slowly and in a controlled manner. Often when we are stressed we breathe in a very shallow way and gradually our oxygen levels can decrease, marginally but often with an impact. Your lungs fill your chest cavity from just below your collar bones to the diaphragm, they are really quite large and when you breathe in a shallow way, just moving your chest, you are only using a fraction of your lung capacity. Taking full deep breaths can give you a boost in energy and will give the parasympathetic nervous system a greater chance of counteracting your stress response.
Try these quick fixes and notice what happens to your stress levels.
For more information on how to overcome stress and get stress in your life under control please contact me, Joanne Lee for a confidential consultation.
Call +44 7856 382832 or email tranceformationsnow@gmail.com