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| When she is happy, her smile can light up a room. However beautiful as she may be, her eyes hide nothing and tell another story. |
Regardless of what you do, where you live, how rich or poor, or who you are, there is one thing each of us has in common–-some form of stress in our lives. The problems may differ, but rest assured no one is immune. After all, life is full of twists and turns to make it a never-ending challenge. The real trick to living is learning how to manage that daily stress to better cope with the ups and downs. Though you may be skeptical, there are simple ways that you can help yourself de-stress through it all.
Before you allow that stressful situation to consume you, try redirecting your energy into a physical activity. Exercising your body, instead of your mind will help the brain to release that rush of mood-elevating endorphins for help in feeling better. Scrub, vacuum, dance, take a walk, yoga, aerobics or get on your treadmill if you want. The important thing is to do whatever exercise for at least fifteen minutes to give those positive endorphins a chance to kick in.
If you can’t take your fifteen minute break because of time or your job, you can still help yourself just by getting up from your chair and stretching. Walk around your desk, make a trip to the restroom and splash your face with a little water can make a difference.
Music is therapeutic in how it soothes the soul. Help yourself by preparing your own playlist of calming tunes and store on your iPod. Keep it handy and listen to those songs when you feel life closing in.
Another helpful thing that you can do is to practice your abdominal breathing where you take in long, deep breaths to fill your lungs. Slowly inhaling through your nose as you draw the air deeply from your core until you can’t do it any more before exhaling is calming. Taking a few minutes to breathe this way can only help you de-stress.
Though this is not always possible, try avoiding conflict or a person that you know will trigger a volatile reaction. Walk away from a potential argument that you know might be coming before it can escalate can only keep your blood pressure and stress levels in healthy check.
Something else that I highly recommend is massage. As you loosen those stress-induced knots in the muscles, you also are helping to stimulate circulation. When you have better blood flow as with exercise can stimulate the brain to produce brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) to grow more brain cells, which can only help.
You also might want to retreat to a warm bath and add some drops of lavender essential oil for some alone time and healing aromatherapy.
These are just some few ways that can help make a stressful bad day into a tolerable one. For more of my posts on stress do read the below links.
