Stress Management

Uncontrolled stress creates havoc on your emotional balance, it narrows your ability to think clearly and damages your physical health. Unfortunately there’s not much things you can do about stress. Your responsibilities will not go on a permanent vacation, there will never be more hours in the day, your bills won’t stop coming, your work and family responsibilities will always be demanding.
So what’s the way out? The fact that you’re in control of your life is the foundation of stress management. Effective stress management helps you break the hold stress has on your life. It makes you to be more happy, healthy, vigorous and more productive. The key to deal with stress is simply maintain a balanced life. It includes enough time for work, relationships, relaxation, and fun—and the resilience to hold up under pressure and meet challenges head on.

Here are some tips in order to successfully identify and manage the stress in your daily life;
 

1. Identify stress source:

First of all, you have to understand that if the stress factors in your life is temporary or permanent? Are they a part of your personality or they are coming from an outside source?

Can you hold the strings of your stress level in order to lower, remove or control it?
It is obviously not easy and requires to be mastered to discover the root cause of your stress level. However it has to be well known that your stress level will be out of control if you don’t understand the role you play in creating or maintaining it.

2.Time management:

Time management is the process of organizing and planning how much time you spend on specific activities. Managing your time accordingly is your biggest ally against stress management. With using the time to arrange your priorities, you can give yourself the best chance of stay on track and organized, which in return can drastically help to reduce stress levels. This will help you to stay calm and focused while allowing you to have enough time to socialize, entertain, exercise, work, sleep etc... Here are some practical tips for effective time management:

If a large project seems overwhelming, break it into small steps. Instead of handling everything at once, focus on small steps that can be manageable more easily. Also make a list of tasks you have to do, and tackle them in order of importance. By prioritizing those tasks, you can expect what is planned with an ease state of mind.

You don’t have to do it all yourself if you have an efficient delegation mentality. Let go of the desire to control or oversee every little step. You’ll be letting go of unnecessary stress in the process. Also avoid setting up tasks to fit too much into one day, create some space for yourself. Do not over-­‐commit and create your own stress out of nothing.
 

3.Define a stress strategy:

We are adapting various wrong strategies while trying the overcome the stress in our daily life. Smoking, drinking too much, consuming junk food, sleeping too much and procrastinating are amongst the unhealthiest ones. Also stealing the time you ought to spend with friends, family, and social in order to work more will drastically effect your productivity and cumulatively boost your stress level.

One of the most common mistake to avoid stress is to fill up every minute of the day to avoid facing problems. Here is a lifesaving tip, problems will not be avoided by delaying. On the contrary, they will keep growing until one day it will not be possible to control and manage them.

4.Avoid unnecessary stress:

Stress is a complicated organism that can be a friend or foe. Whether the fact that we are trying to find out how to lower the stress level from our daily life, it’s also not healthy to avoid a stressful situation that needs to be addressed properly for to inject short term boost
 
to your productivity. Putting the healthy stress aside, there are huge number of unhealthy stressors in life that can eliminated easily.
Begin with saying "no". Know your limits and stick to them because taking on more than you can handle is a guarantee recipe for stress. Understand the difference between the "should" and the "must" and, when possible, say "no" to taking on too much.

Avoid people who stress you out. If someone consistently causes stress in your life, limit the amount of time you spend with that person, or end the relationship.

Take control of your environment. If the evening news makes you anxious, turn off the TV. If traffic makes you tense, take a longer but less busy route. If going to the market is an unpleasant chore do your grocery shopping online.

Create a to-­‐do-­‐list. Analyze your responsibilities, schedule and routine tasks in order to prioritize them accordingly. The path for your inner peace can cross from putting that unnecessary task to the bottom of your list or eliminating them for good.

5.Accept the things you can't change:

Don’t try to control the uncontrollable! Death of a loved one, economic recessions, loss of health are examples of stress sources that cannot be prevented or controlled most of the time. In such cases, even it might be difficult, accepting the things as they are can be the only way to cope with the stress.

Forgiveness is power. It empowers you to recognize the pain you suffered without letting that pain define you, enabling you to heal and move on with your life. Accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world and that people make mistakes. Let go of anger and resentments.

6.Move your body:

Physical exercises release chemicals called endorphins. These endorphins interact with the receptors in your brain that reduce your perception of pain and trigger a positive feeling in the body that makes you happy. That’s why physical activities are huge stress relievers.

By generating simple habits such as using the stairs at home or work rather than an elevator, walking to the local market instead of driving, playing an activity-­‐based game, finding a like-­‐minded exercise partner and encourage each other for overcome further challenges will definitely reduce your stress level and make you more healthy.
 
Last but not least, my five cents advice; create a stress Anchor! It may be your favorite music band, an episode from your comedy show, a soothing poem from a poet, taking a hike in nature, calling your high school buddy or simply (and for the lucky ones) spending some time alone with your child. Let them save you from that stressful moment and balance your inner peace for a better and more quality living...


Aziz Can Aksöyek
TAV Technologies Bids and Contracts Manager