Stress has been a big topic this week. It has a massive impact on your health and well-being. It also drastically affects exercise progress and fat loss. It is one of the main reasons that people come to a complete stand still with their fitness and weight loss results.
Don’t let stress take control as it can ruin you. Let it know that YOU are the boss.
I bet your thinking here she goes again making it all sound happy clappy easy peasy. It is not easy I know. I do blow a gasket regularly.
It may seem that there’s nothing you can do about stress. The family, relationships, work responsibilities, deadlines, bills, are all constant demands on us that won’t simply go away.
BUT
You do have more control than you might think over stress.
Those that handle stress the best know that they are in control of their life.
Managing stress is all about taking charge: of your thoughts, emotions, time, and the way you deal with problems.
To manage stress you need to:
Identify the true sources of stress in your life. They are not always obvious so check your habits, and excuses.
Look at how you currently cope with stress. Do you have healthy and helpful coping strategies or ones that may cause further problems later on?
Drinking, smoking, over or under eating, physical violence, withdrawing from friends and family are all unhealthy coping strategies that will have detrimental long term effects on your health.
Healthy ways to manage stress are not easy as they require CHANGE.
You may need to change the situation and avoid or alter the stressor
OR
You may need to change your reaction and adapt or accept the stressor.
Not all stress can be avoided but you can remove a lot of stressors in your life by:
>learning to say ‘no’,
>avoiding people who cause you stress,
>doing tasks that are important and necessary ahead of other tasks,
>avoiding situations and discussions that make you anxious or upset.
Changing the way you communicate may help you alter stressful situations. Try to be more assertive so that you can deal with problems immediately, be willing to compromise, be open with your feelings to avoid a build up of problems and resentment.
You can adapt to certain stressors by changing your attitude. Focus on the positive, put things in persepective by looking at the bigger picture and re-frame problems. Your self talk and the way you think have a massive effect on your physical and mental health and your ability to control stress.
Many things such as the actions of others are beyond our control so there is no point worrying over them. Focus on controlling the controllables as outlined above. Change the way you react to situations and learn from your mistakes. Free yourself of negativity, anger, resentment by accepting that you can not change some things and that you need to move on.
Make time to relax, have fun and recharge. Do not think of this as a luxury but as something that is neccessary for your health and well being.
Stress management is an area that we help clients with on our transformation programmes.
So go do something relaxing this weekend – You deserve it.
