STRESS MANAGEMENT FOR YOUR INNER SELF

1. Awareness of Stress. Try to get clear in your mind what stresses you the most. What are your particular stressors? Be on the lookout for your stress signals so that you know as soon as you need to take action.

2. Cultivate a Sense of Control. Stress is different things to different people. Discovering another person's long-distance calls on your phone bill may be your last straw, while that same snafu might challenge some one else to get to the bottom of the mystery-and feel great for the effort. It's not the event, but your perception of it that makes for stress. Stressed-out people feel that life is spinning out of control and that they're powerless, while stress-resistant personalities feel a distinct sense of control. The challenge; Do something about what's bugging you if that's possible or forget about it if it's not. The trick is being able to distinguish which is which.

3. Look Inward. One of the best ways to find your focus is by meditating. Take 20 minutes to concentrate on a line from a poem, a pleasing image or even your breathing. Studies generally show that meditation reduces heart rate, blood pressure and feelings of anxiety.

4. Breathe Deeply, Smoothly and Slowly. The most basic stress-busting relaxation technique - deep breathing- is as easy to do on a jammed highway as in the supermarket checkout line. Breathing through your nose, exhaling twice as long as you inhale and not pausing between the in and the out breaths. In one large controlled study of heart patients it was revealed that those who practiced deep, diaphragmatic breathing were 50 per cent less likely to have another heart attack.

5. Begin with Prayer, End with a Walk. Start your day with a 10 minutes spirituality check-in, and end it up with a brisk walk or run. Exercise is nature's best tranquilizer.


6. Do Something With Your Hands Other Than Wringing. Make paper planes, a birdhouse, a needlepoint pillow, a cheesecake from scratch. A soothing manual task distracts the mind from worries and sometimes frees it to come up with a sudden, inspired solution to a problem.

7. Take a Mind Flight. For just a minute or two, close your eyes and imagine being on a quiet beach. Imagine the texture of he san, the warmth of the sun, lapping waves, the scent of flowers. Or picture yourself riding on the back of a huge graceful bird in flight. Mental imaging has been proven to have a powerful effect on blood pressure and heart rate.

8. Suck on Sour Balls. Research at MIT on the role of diet in stress has shown that both simple and complex carbohydrates may have a eating them; primal, rhythmic sucking or sipping may do even more. A hard boiled sweet, eaten slowly, may just do the trick.

9. Smile. When your life gets frantic, a smile will work wonders. Research conducted at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research links smiling to changes in brain chemistry that reduce feelings of tension. Smiling allows you to breathe through your nose, which cools your brain and, in turn, cuts down on the release of grief-inducting neuro transmitters.

10. Laugh. When an earing slides down the drain or your bread ignites in the toaster, chuckles and chortles can take the sting out of stress. Laughter can improve respiration and circulation and can suppress damaging stress-related hormones. A 35 yrs long study of 268 Harvard University graduates found that those who had a good sense of humour coped with stress better and lived longer.

11. Analysis and Treatment of Actual Stressor. There are basically four alternative strategies for managing your stresses:-

(a) Take Action.

(b) Withdraw.

(c) Do Nothing.

(d) Adjust Your Attitude.

(i) Put the stressor in correct perspective.

(ii) Avoid negative thoughts and fantasies.

11. Put in Perspective. Stress gets us up and out of bed in the morning, spurs us to be productive and proves we're alive. So it isn't all bad news. Stress is simply the body's response to any demand to adapt.