Stress-proof Your Life

The inability to cope with stress poses a serious threat to health.  It may worsen any present disease, cause sleep disorders, increase blood pressure and the risk of having a heart attack, and it may also alter the brain to leave us irrationally anxious and depressed.  We respond differently to stress because of the various stress tolerance we have.  Our ability to handle stress may be affected by: our knowledge of what causes it; our sense of control; our attitude and outlook towards it; our ability to handle our feelings; and our support system.

Stress-proofing our lives is as important as learning how to cope with stress as it comes.  Let’s try to look at some of the things we can do before our stressors take control of our lives:

1.  Keep things in order.  Organize!  Use color-coded and correctly labeled bins and boxes to keep your things.  Group them accordingly to save time when looking for your stuff.  Always remember to put things back where they are kept to avoid misplacing them.  Also, set aside specific days in a month where you could check and reorganize your things.  Small post-its pinned on fridges work wonders too in helping you remember a chore or an event.

2.  Create timetables.  Keeping a handy planner does an amazing job.  It gives you an overview of how busy your day / week / month will be, and you become aware of the load of work that is expected of you.  Jotting down these important activities keeps you ahead of time and helps you remember.  It also gives you an idea if still you have room for extra curricular stuff or not.  It saves you from being unable to attend to commitments because you’ve forgotten that you were already booked for that day.  Timetable creation is a step to managing your time better.

3.  Create a stress diary.  This will contain your identified stressors, the attitude and feelings you have for each, and notes on how you responded to them.  It will give you an idea of how you’ve managed stress in the past.  With this diary, you may be able to get rid of modifiable stressors, learn to adapt to unavoidable ones, avoid certain stressors, and you may also look at the way you handle stress (positively or negatively).

4.  Relax and recharge.  Perhaps the most rewarding of all.  Relaxing and recharging moments can’t get any better!  Relaxing spa treatments received at a regular basis helps both the mind and the body.  It prepares you for the days to come where stress is purely inevitable.    Popular spa treatments include swedish massages,  trigger point massages, herbal wraps, and scrubs.  The body is recharged with energy, while the mind is cleared from any negative vibes.  Make it a habit to visit relaxing places!

Nothing beats a person who can positively face stress that comes his way.  Mishandling stress must not have a room in our lives because it can do much harm than we could even imagine.

Organize.  Timetable.  Stress Diary.  Relaxing and recharging.  Foolproof your life!