Posts Tagged ‘stress levels’
Eliminate Stress
June 8th, 2010 | 
Author: Are You Looking For Permanent Ways To Managing Stress In Your Life?
“Stress Tips” Might Not Sound Like Much, But These Stress Tips Are Actually Stress Busters!
If you are like me you are constantly overworked and unable to relax. Believe me, I know where you are coming from (probably coming home late from work!)
Somehow you never seem to be able to relax, to spend enough time with friends and family, since there is always something there that is driving you to worry and work your life away.
Why is that? Why Are You Constantly Stressed Out?
Certain personalities are definitely more prone to stress than others. The thing is that it is really up to YOU to manage your stress.
If you pride yourself on managing your finances, managing your work and managing your responsibilities, then you should pride yourself equally on managing your life and your stress levels.
Make it a commitment to yourself and get these stress management tips and apply them to your life and get rid of your stress.
Don’t get fooled by the title. These aren’t 400 lightweight stress management tips, they are stress management strategies that will help you to manage your life and put the stressors in your life in the right perspective.
Click here to read more about getting your stressed life back on track:
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Posted in Managing Stress | 
Tags: life stress, Managing Stress, personalities, stress busters, stress levels, stress management strategies, stress management tips, stress tips | Comments Closed
InLaughter slogan trademark does not make me smile
I read in my local newspaper recently about this guy who is a ‘Laughterologist’. He offered some workshops in the area to introduce locals to the benefit of aerobic laughter.
Apparently you can get an excellent cardio and aerobic workout by rediscovering your natural laughing capabilities. Kids laugh a lot when they are small and we all tend to laugh a lot less when we grow up (yeah, don’t we just know it!) but laughter is an excellent way to combat stress. Aerobic laughter triggers the body’s natural de-stressing mechanisms. This sounded great so I checked out their website. What a disappointment.
For people that are supposed to be all about laughter and de-stressing, they are pretty serious about their copyright and trademarks!
In fact, no further information available on their site except a lot of links leading off to dire warnings about their copyright and trademark. Urk… I mean - can they really take out a trademark on the words MAKE THEM LAUGH?
On one of their sites they state:
“Make them Laugh is a new slogan used worldwide to market laughter services provided by individuals or legal persons licensed by International Laughter Institute.”
Frankly, things like this make my blood boil and increases my stress levels instead of decreasing it.
Who gives them the right to trademark the words “MAKE THEM LAUGH” ???? My understanding was always that you can only trademark a really unique term, not something that is in ubiquitous use?
See http://www.inlaughter.org…
Tags: aerobic workout, cardio, laughter, slogan, stress levels, stress managementRelated posts
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Stress Diary to help identify your stressors
What is a stress diary?
You know that you ’suffer from stress’, you know that you fly off the handle at the slighted provocation because you are always feeling tired and irritable - but you don’t know why and you feel powerless to stop it.
Keeping a stress diary is a useful way of identifying those things that cause you stress, and how much stress they actually cause you!
How does a stress diary work?
Basically you need to keep a diary each day and take note of the following:
- Date and time of entry
- Whether there was any particular event that made you feel tense and stressed
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how stressed did you feel
- What symptoms of stress were you exhibiting
- How did you handle the stress (if at all!)
You should keep this diary over a period of time such as a couple of weeks so that you can start identifying patterns of behaviors and events. Soon you will start to be able to identify:
- Which events outside your control is causing you stress (examples include standing in queues, dealing with obnoxious customers etc) and how you reacted to these events. Remember, ultimately it is your own behavior, your reaction to the event that is causing you stress. You need to learn how to modify your behavior to these events so that you experience less stress. As soon as you can identify your behavioral patterns and your reactions to certain events, you can start to manage your stress levels.
- Which stressors were self induced BY your behavior? Examples would include – ignoring the alarm clock and then getting stressed because you are late for work, or, the killer, taking on too much responsibility and work because you think you can handle it and then running out of time (and feeling stressed as a consequence) to complete the tasks.
As soon as you can identify your responses to stressful events and the behaviors that are causing self-induced stress levels you can start doing something about it.
Tags: alarm clock, behavioral patterns, period of time, provocation, queues, running out of time, stress diary, stress levels, stressful events, stressors, symptoms of stress, time of entryRelated posts
Good stress and bad stress
Not all stress is bad for you. The fact of the matter is that life would be extremely boring if there was no stress. Stress is the frisson that adds excitement to life ? think of the thrills that some people actively search out such as jumping off high bridges or climbing mountains.
Stress, in the right quantities can propel us forward and make us complete tasks and reach goals. The secret is to maintain a balance ? as is the case with all things in life!
The problem is that certain types of personalities just does not seem to know where to stop ? instead of maintaining just enough stress levels to make life interesting and be motivated to reach goals and perform at your peak, they just don’t seem to know where to stop! They would take on more and more tasks and responsibilities and in the end be so overworked and burnt-out that they start suffering from health problems and other mental disorders.
Are you too stressed for your own good? Take our stress test here to see where your level of stress is at!
http://www.managing-stress.org/stress-tests/how-stressed-are-you/
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Identifying what you want from life
You have to know what you want from life, since ultimately how you live your life and the actions that you take to get what you want will determine your stress levels to a large extent.
The problem is that you need to take a good look at your priorities - do you really want to die from overwork or do you want to enjoy life?
Being ambitious and an achiever might just compensate for deep-seated feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. Do you really think that you will be happy once you have reached your goal? No. Basically you will feel a tremendous sense of achievement for a day or two and then that feeling of emptiness will set in - and you will create the next goal for yourself in order to feel that you are moving forward in life. This goal might be completely arbitrary and not in line with your ultimate life goals, anything to just keep on moving forward and feeling that you have some kind of purpose in your life.
The basics of setting a goal is an open secret known by top-caliber athletes, successful businessmen and businesswomen and all types of achievers in all the different fields. The basics of setting goals give you short-term and long-term motivation and focus. They help you set focus on the acquisition of required knowledge and help you to plan and organize your resources and your time so that you can get the best out of your life.
Setting clearly defined short term and long term goals will enable you to measure your progress and achieve personal satisfaction once you have successfully met your goals. Charting your progress will also enable you to actually see the stages of completion leading to the actual realization of your goals. This eliminates the feeling of a long and pointless grind towards achieving your goal. Your self-confidence and level of competence will also improve as you will be more aware of your capabilities as you complete or achieve your goals.
Tags: achiever, achievers, feeling of emptiness, insecurity, life goals, low self esteem, personal satisfaction, self confidence, setting goals, stress levels, successful businessmen, term motivationRelated posts
Stress Management And Health
Stress always goes hand in hand with health. Depending to the stress level of a person, the impact of stress in the body can range from minor sweaty palms to death. Letting stress build can slowly deteriorate health and can cause major health risks. Managing stress and health are important ways to avoid health risks in the future. In order to manage stress and health better, a person must first be acquainted to the severe effects of stress in the body.
Physical And Behavioral Signs Of Stress
Stressors can be either external or internal. External stressors involve situations in the workplace, death or illness in the family, or by simply becoming angry. On the other hand, most of the stress that people experience is self-generated or internal. A person usually creates his or her own stress but this indicates that the person has the choice or doing nothing or something about it.
Stress can affect major body systems. When a person feels stressed, there is an increase in heart rate, elevation in the blood pressure. The continuous pressure in the heart can make a person susceptible to cardiac arrest and other heart-related problems.
The digestive system is also affected during stress. Some people can experience diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, dryness of the mouth and the throat. Almost every time stress can also cause sleeping disturbances, nausea, and in serious cases tightness of the chest, neck, jaw and the back muscles.
Changes in behavioral patterns are also noticeable in a person experiencing the duress of stress. Smokers experience increase in smoking pattern. Aggressive behaviors and hostility towards others and even inanimate objects are sometimes linked to a person being easily startled. A person’s diet can also be affected by the irregular eating habits caused by stress.
Some people who cannot handle stress usually resort to alcohol and drug use. Additionally, compulsive behavior, impatience and carelessness are also the behavioral effects of stress.
Long Term Implications
Exposure to stress in the long term can surely deteriorate a person's well-being. During stress the body produces hormones that enable the body to cope with the current situation. Short term effects of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and corticosteroids include tense muscles, queasiness and an in increase in breathing and heart rates.
The long term implications of these hormones include allergic reactions, digestive disorder, heart disease, fatigue headaches and migraine. Impotence and premature ejaculation can occur in men while erratic menstrual cycle for women.
When the body continuously releases the hormones, sleeping patterns can also be affected and can sometimes lead to insomnia. In severe cases, stress, in the long run, can cause eczema, ulcerative colitis, mouth and peptic ulcers and recurring muscular aches and pains.
Living Healthy
How a person identifies stress is important to overall health. When stress becomes too huge to handle, the damage to a person's physical and mental well-being can be irreversible. Living a healthy life can help a person cope with stress easily.
Exercise is very important in stress and health management. Along with a healthy diet, exercise is the most effective way to lower stress levels. It improves sugar metabolism through efficient use of insulin. Exercise also aids in putting a stop in the nasty cycles of stress-eating, indulgence to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs.
A person can also consider taking herbs, and anti-stress supplements. Taking vitamins and avoiding alcohol are successful methods in improving health and help a person cope with stress better.
Tags: effects of stress, heart disease, Insomnia, Managing Stress, stress levels, stress managementRelated posts
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Managing Stress Tip - Just say ‘No’
One of the biggest causes of stress is not having enough time to do everything that you are responsible for - or that you feel you are responsible for.
The problem is that some people, especially if your personality type is such that you are a ‘people pleaser’, or if you have a slightly low self-image and therefore crave the approval of other people, just cannot say ‘no’.
This could range from anything from favors asked by relatives - to babysit your awful nieces and nephews, or to act as taxi for your old aunt Edna and take her shopping for hours; to extra work dumped on you by your boss or by your co-workers.
This can lead to a major source of stress. You might feel taken advantage of, and the extra tasks might just be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to speak.
It is essential that you take a good look at the factors that are causing you stress, and if lack of time, or the feeling of being drained due to constantly having to pander to the demands of family and friends, are contributing to you feeling stressed, you just have to learn how to say no.
The funny thing is that you really do NOT need to explain your reasons, however, if you feel a bit daunted and feel that it would be incredibly rude to just say no outright, you could possibly try by saying that you cannot do XYZ right now, but you will think about it. That is a nice polite way of dodging the issue. The problem of course is that it has not really gone away and the persistent family member might just take you up on the ‘later’ bit, however, just be consistent and persistent in saying ‘no’ and they will soon get the message.
This might sound harsh, and believe me, I sometimes have difficulty in following my own advice, but lack of time and being over-committed on tasks are the major contributors to MY stress levels and mentally I realize that saying ‘no’ is one of the best ways of reducing stress levels.
Come on, be a bit selfish. It might just be the best thing for you to do sometimes.
Tags: Causes Of Stress, lack of time, Managing Stress, people pleaser, personality type, reducing stress, self image, source of stress, stress levels, stress tip