It’s almost impossible to live a completely stress-free life but learning how to manage stress when you experience it will most definitely smooth the pathway to less anxiety and more enjoyment. The trouble is, many people don’t know how to deal with stress when they are faced with difficult situations and circumstances. Without knowing how to cope, stress can lead to illness, accidents, and breakdown in personal relationships.
Luckily, there are lots of things that you can do to reduce the symptoms of stress. Those symptoms include feeling nervous, experiencing disturbed sleep, losing your appetite (or increasing your appetite), lack of libido, short temperedness and general feelings associated with low mood.
Here are a few pointers to reduce anxiety:
Get outside
The sunlight releases serotonin which is a mood enhancing hormone and can help you to feel less anxious. A brisk walk can help to clear your thoughts too.
Get some sleep
Easy to say when you aren’t sleeping well but downloading a good quality sleep app or trying meditation techniques can quieten the mind. Go to bed at the same time every night, switch off all electronic equipment (such as a smartphone, tablet etc.), darken your room and listen to relaxing music. Perhaps have a pleasurable bath an hour before bedtime and a warm, milky drink too. It’s widely believed that reading a book helps to distract your mind from anxious thoughts.
Take exercise
Exercise is excellent if you need to get rid of some aggression! It also releases endorphins, another feel-good hormone. If your body is strong and fit, it is much more likely to cope with stressful situations better and protect you from illness.
Surround yourself with people you love
Being with upbeat people helps to uplift your mood and acts as an excellent distraction to problems.
Face your fears head on
If you are in a stressful situation, don’t avoid it, face it because when you deal with a situation you might be able to remove the stress altogether. One of the main causes of stress is that out of control feeling. Once you take control, you will get rid of that emotion.
Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts
Remember, a problem shared is a problem halved so find someone you trust and let the weight of stress leave your shoulders. If you don’t have anyone to talk to, consider seeking professional counseling.
Build in some “me” time into your day
One of the reasons people are so stressed is because of juggling busy lives including work, home, family, and children. If you can build in just half an hour a day to do something you enjoy, you will help beat stress.
Don’t pick up unhealthy habits such as drinking too much alcohol or reaching for cigarettes. They won’t help and in fact, as they’re habit-forming, they will do you harm in the long term.
Accept what you can’t change
If a stressful situation cannot be altered, accept it and focus on what you can change instead.
Sixty One Inspirational Stress-Busting Quotes
Sometimes, just reading some inspirational advice can inspire you to deal with a situation differently. Here are some excellent stress-busting quotes designed to give you strength when times feel challenging.
1. Give your stress wings and let it fly away. Lydia Sweatt
2. Simply let experience take place very freely, so that your open heart is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion. Tsoknyi Rinpoche
3. Breath is the power behind all things. I breathe in and know that good things will happen. Tao Porchon-Lynch
4. If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles. Doug Larson
5. Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. Thich Nhat Hanh
6. There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. James Carroll
7. Calmness is the cradle of power. Josiah Gilbert Holland
8. When life knocks you down, try to land on your back because if you can look up, you can get up. Let your reason get you back up. Les Brown
9. Prosperity is a great teacher. Adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it. William Hazlitt
10. Understand this and be free; we are not in our bodies; our bodies are inside us. Sean A Mulvihill
11. Within you, there is stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself. Hermann Hesse
12. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain. Vivian Greene
13. Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think and twice as beautiful as you ever imagined. Doctor Seuss
14. A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. Aesop
15. Don’t try to force anything. Let life be a deep let-go. God opens millions of flowers every day without forcing their buds. Osho
16. Rule number one is don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is it’s all the small stuff. Robert Eliot
17. It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it. Hans Selye
18. When you have exhausted all the possibilities, remember this, you haven’t. Thomas Edison
19. Just because fate doesn’t deal you the right cards, it doesn’t mean you should give up. It just means you have to play the cards you get to their maximum potential. Les Brown
20. Life is like photography. You need the negatives to develop. Anonymous
21. Stress is not what happens to us. It’s our response to what happens and response is something we can choose. Maureen Killoran
22. Bad things happen to good people all the time. It sucks. It’s not fair but then much of life isn’t fair. It’s how you live that matters. It’s how you deal with the bumps in the road. Maya Banks
23. The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. William James
24. For fast-acting relief, try slowing down. Lily Tomlin
25. How beautiful it is to do nothing and then to rest afterward. Spanish proverb
26. Set peace of mind as your highest goal and organize your life around it. Brian Tracy
27. Stress can actually help you focus better and can be positive. Having small amounts of stress can stimulate you to think. Being able to manage your stress is key. Frank Long
28. Don’t underestimate the value of doing anything, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering. Winnie the Pooh
29. It’s a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life. Paolo Coelho
30. Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day to day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life. Marilu Henner
31. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress. Viggo Mortensen
32. Doing something that is productive is a great way to alleviate emotional stress. Get your mind doing something that is productive. Ziggy Marley
33. Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what you’ve started. David Allen
34. Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. Margaret Fuller
35. It is not a daily increase but a daily decrease. Hack away the inessentials. Bruce Lee
36. If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times. Dean Smith
37. Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. Ovid
38. The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it. Sydney J Harris
39. Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. Robert F Kennedy
40. Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there”. Eckhardt Tolle
41. There is more to life than increasing its speed. Mahatma Gandhi
42. Behind every stressful thought is the desire for things to be other than what they are. Toni Bernhard
43. The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. Elbert Hubbard
44. Everything in human life is a test. That is why everyone looks so stressed out. Matt Haig
45. Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. Benjamin Franklin
46. One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. Bertrand Rssell
47. Errors in the course of action could be wasted by dwelling on them, but wisdom is learning the lesson in the mistake. Ganesh
48. Believing that you must do something to perfection is a recipe for stress. Steve Pavlina
49. There are thousands of causes for stress and one antidote to stress is self-expression. That’s what happens to me every day. My thoughts get off my chest, down my sleeves and onto my pad. Garson Kanin
50. The day she let go of the things that were weighing her down, was the day she began to shine the brightest. Katrina Mayer
51. When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened. Winston Churchill
52. In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers. Fred Rogers
53. Decide to focus on one thing at a time, instead of trying to solve everything at once. Just do that one thing, then you will feel a sudden decrease in stress. Gudjon Bergmann
54. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. James Allen
55. Don’t let the world know you have a big problem. Tell your problem you have got a big God. John Cave
56. Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. Oprah Winfrey
57. If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress, and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it. George Burns
58. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes) which nature cannot repair. Ralph Waldo Emerson
59. If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Mary Engelbreit
