13 Ways to Reduce Stress
Below are 13 different ways that you can choose from to reduce your stress. Which 2 can you use this week?
1. Rid of toxic people. Some
of the biggest stressors we have in life come from family and friends. As hard
as this is, if you want to reduce stress in your life, rid of the Toxic people. Pull out the old journal and write down all the
people that are toxic in your life. The bi-polars (these people take you up and
down. I love you, I hate you), the criers, the takers, the down-right mean
people, the users, the bull-shitters, the gossipers, and the passive
aggressives. Circle the ones you know you can get rid of first and erase them
like you hit the delete button on your computer. The people who stir up drama
in your life will always have drama, bringing you down a slippery slope of
trying to manage their stress and your own. Some people say you are what you
eat. I say, you are who you associate with. People are typically a combination
of the top three to five people they associate with most. Take a moment to
reflect on the people you spend most of your time with and reflect on whether
or not these people are in line with your goals and values.
2. Set boundaries. I
understand that there are people that you can’t or may not want to rid of that
are toxic. Mothers and fathers can sometimes be toxic and very hurtful. With
people that are toxic that you choose not to rid of, you must set clear
boundaries. Setting boundaries means that you do not enable people to continue
hurting you. Kindness ≠ Doormat. If you keep giving and giving to people, they
will keep taking and taking. That is human nature; you can’t fault people for
that. You can help people, but you do not need to change your schedule and do
things that are harmful to you in order to help them. Once you begin working
harder to help someone than they are working to help themselves, you are
becoming a doormat.
3. Do not compare yourself. One
of the best things that you can do to avoid stress on your journey of life is
to not compare yourself to others.
When you compare yourself to someone else, you put yourself in a direct line
for failure. Every person’s past is different, their biology is different,
their circumstances are different and there is a lot you do not know about them
in general. You are in control of you and need to take the time and energy to
explore who you are before you can rate yourself up against someone else, who
in reality, you might really not even want to be. This does not mean that you
cannot have role models and mentors. You can admire certain characteristics in
people such as their motivation or integrity. You can use certain people’s life
paths as a guide to help you. The one thing you cannot do is measure your
success against someone else’s scale of life.
4. Set realistic goals.
If you want to reduce your stressors, set
goals that are realistic and attainable. Use the acronym SMART when setting
goals for yourself- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Bound.
Many times women set goals that are unrealistic- sometimes because we are
comparing ourselves to someone else, or maybe just because we are dreaming big.
It is okay to dream big, but be sure that each goal you set toward your dreams
is something that is realistic and attainable for that moment in your life.
5. Forgive.
Let go
of grudges, they hurt only you. Only you live with these negative thoughts
every day, no one else. Forgive the past and everyone in it, so you can move
forward. You do not have to feel forgiveness, you just do it. You deserve
freedom. Remember this, if you drink
the poison of anger, don’t expect the bad guy to die.
6. Stop Ruminating. Some studies have shown that women are more prone
to rumination. Rumination is that thinking we have where we spend hours going
over the same thing, again and again. When we face stressors, our brain
immediately has memories of when we were in similar situations. The issue with
women is that we tend to remember events of where we were wrong or where we
messed up. We then spiral our brains down into this self-defeating,
self-bashing event where we then “ruminate” for hours on what went wrong. This
rumination of “things we have done bad,” becomes a pattern. Patterns get
stronger and quicker over time. To reduce stress, catch the negativity before
you spending hours ruminating. When you begin to think poorly about yourself or
decisions, try to find support for your faulty assumption, usually there is not
support for self-defeating thoughts. Then, begin to reframe your negative
thinking and challenge these thoughts. Don’t turn one bad decision into a
lifetime of bad choices and do not think that one bad decision means that you
are bad at “everything,” learn from it and march on.
7. Do not make impulsive decisions. This goes for breaking up
with boyfriends, leaving a job, firing an employee, investing in stock,
anything. When women make impulsive decisions, it is typically out of emotion.
Making impulsive decisions decreases our confidence because those decisions are
not strong and had little thought behind them. Write decisions that you are
contemplating in your journal and go back to that entry in a day or two.
Re-read what you wrote, does this still sound like a good idea?
8. Tell a good story. Be cautious how to tell your life story. The
more you tell your story, the more your story shapes you in the present. Often,
women tell stories about their lives that show the drama that they have gone
through. This drama becomes a pattern and habit for a way of living. Drama is
stressful. Eliminate your own drama by reframing your life story to show
strength, resilience and self-control, the more we tell and retell that story,
eventually we become that story.
9. Realize you are not lucky. You earned what you have. When we feel lucky
for all we have, we create an underlying stress because “luck runs out.” However,
when you earned something, it is more permanent, decreasing stress. You earned
that job promotion, you did not get it out of luck. Once you realize you earned
what you have confidence goes up and stress due to fear of luck running out,
goes down.
10. Surround yourself with positive people. Negativity truly is
contagious and stressful. Pessimism alone is actually an internal stressor on
the body because it not only turns on our fight and flight response, but it
keeps it going for longer periods of time. Pessimists tend to think that there
is a limited amount of things they can do to change a situation and thus sit in
negativity longer than an optimist. Stay away from pessimists and reframe your
negativity so that people who are positive want to be around you.
11. Worry once, not twice. Do not live the same pain
twice, especially if the pain might be unnecessary. If you create anxiety and tell
yourself that something might go wrong, and then you in fact it goes wrong,
then you lived the pain twice. Once before you knew if the situation was going
to end badly and then once after you found out. If you tell yourself that
something might go wrong, and then you in fact it does not go wrong, you lived
the pain initially for no reason. This goes for everything in life. Do not
stress out until it’s time to stress.
12. Realize that you are not perfect. Perfection is non-existent.
People who claim that they are perfectionists often don’t find fulfillment in
life. Likewise, when a perfectionist does fail, they are very critical of
themselves leading to self-defeating beliefs and a reduction in confidence. The
enormous amount of stress a person puts on themselves as they work toward being
perfect is damaging to the body physiologically and psychologically. Those
trying to seek perfection will only cycle at the point in life they are at,
whereas those who acknowledge flaws can find ways to fix them and move forward
toward developing their full potential.
13. Distract yourself.
Lastly, when you are faced with stressors, distract yourself with something you
both enjoy and that is healthy for your body: exercise, journaling, painting,
listening to music. Find ways to beef up your energy so that as you begin to
take on stressors you do so with the least amount of stress possible.
Dr. Jaime Kulaga understands the complexities of women’s lives and helps to increase their self-awareness and self-esteem. She is the advocate of the under-appreciated, over-worked and un-fulfilled woman, dedicated to greatly improving and creating a gratifying, enjoyable life... rather than an unfulfilling existence. As the Author and Founder of the SuperWoman’s Guide to Fulfillment, Dr. Jaime has taught and worked with hundreds of women empowering them to discover their own greatness, and in turn, create a loving and gratifying environment for all those in their lives.
Through teaching at the University level, coaching and counseling individuals, couples, and businesses, she educates women, men and families to make better lifestyle decisions, steer the course of their lives, and use practical tools for deeper fulfillment and happiness.Dr. Jaime is a frequent mental health expert on TV and radio and has been featured on Forbes.com, on Maria Shriver's blog, and in Glamour, Self, and Prevention magazines for her expertise in work-life balance and life fulfillment.
