This week on the Health & Wellness side of The Hub, we’ve been paying special attention to the building of a healthy lifestyle, such as getting yourself back in shape and cutting out those bad habits. However, a healthy lifestyle goes far beyond just eating right and exercising regularly. There are many aspects to a healthy lifestyle that are ignored, namely your mental health. Something that can affect that aspect of your health is stress. We all have stress, but some manage it better than others and those who ten to become stressed out more often and to higher degrees could be impacting their overall health in negative ways. Stress has been known to cause high blood pressure and heart conditions if not properly managed.
Talk to your doctor.
You’ll find that this is a recurring theme while speaking about living with a healthy lifestyle. Part of that lifestyle means being in tune with your health and that means regular trips to the doctor. When it comes to dealing with stress, so many people view it as a personal issue they need to overcome themselves and feel it’s not something to take to their doctor. Stress doesn’t need to be something you’re ashamed of because there is not a person around who doesn’t know the feeling. And you doctor can recommend some very helpful methods to dealing with your stress. As always, it is you doctor you should listen to, not the internet, so consult them first.
Identify your causes of stress.
The first step to dealing with your stress is identifying where it comes from. There are so many things that can cause stress, from the big, obvious causes, to the small, hidden causes. For many of us, work would be a big cause for most of our stress. But you need to be specific about exactly what aspects give you stress. Is it certain tasks you’re responsible for? Is it a person at work that gives you stress? In many cases, you won’t be able to completely remove the cause of your stress but by identifying it, you can more effectively learn how to deal with it in a way that reduces the stress.
Understand it’s not going away.
Again, everyone lives with stress so if there was a way to get rid of it completely we’d all be doing that. Unfortunately, that’s just not going to happen. You will not wake up one day and it will have disappeared. That’s why there is no point in ignoring it, it’s part of your life and if you address it you’ll be much better for it in the end. You may not eliminate it, but you can learn to live with it without it controlling your life, and in time, it will become less of a concern.
Put things in perspective.
Stress is largely mental. That’s not dismiss how it can affect a person, because mental obstacles are certainly not easy to overcome. However, in some cases, a little reflection can do wonders in mitigating the problem. In terms of your stress, some rationalizing of the situation might help. For instance, ask yourself what’s the worse that could happen. Whatever it is that’s giving you stress – work, money, public speaking – consider the worse case scenario, then consider how likely that is to happen. Putting things in perspective can often make troubles seem less daunting. That’s not to say it will always work for every situation, but give it a shot.
Focus on the rest of your health.
While stress is a mental state, it is still greatly affected by your overall health. If you feel stressed out often and can’t seem to escape it, you can sometimes neglect the rest of your health. You stop exercising, you eat junk food, al of which is only going to make your stress worse. Try putting even more effort into living healthy. If you’re stressing, go for a run, have a healthy dinner. When you body feels healthy, it affects the mind in the same way.
Enjoy free time.
When you’re feeling stressed, having fun seems like the most impossible thing, but it is at those times where you really need to embrace those things that lift your spirits. If you’ve made a stressful day at work, some people dwell on it and bring the stress home. Don’t allow yourself to do that. Instead, do something that makes you happy. Go to the movies, hangout with friends, or just get some quiet time to relax your mind. This allows you to escape your stress and realize that it’s not something that needs to control your life.
Work at it.
As with any difficult task, this is going to take some trying. I know that stress is unpleasant, but unfortunately, it’s not going to be dealt with all at once. It takes regular and consistent work to manage it and keep it from affecting your healthy lifestyle.
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