You already know a lot about managing stress; from taking deep breathes, to managing your time, you have access to a lot of techniques which can absolutely make a difference in your life.
Yet, our medical system is still seeing a profusion of patients with ailments directly attributed to or worsened by stress. Some of these ailments are diagnosed as common physical manifestation of stress, for example, migraines, fatigue, dizziness, digestive problems. Please note, if you experience any of these symptoms, we still suggest you consult a doctor. In other cases, physicians are seeing patients with medical disorders, diseases or problems that are worsened by stress, such as many digestive disorders (i.e. Crohn’s Disease), diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis, to name just a few.
I myself have been living with Irritable Bowel Syndrome for 25 years. I am no stranger to the debilitating effects of stress to my body and to my quality of life. Many of the stress management techniques available to me at the time didn’t help me, so through time I have acquired new techniques to control my life and manage stress. My intention in writing this guide is to provide you with the missing piece of the puzzle required to help you manage your stress and live the life you want.
WHAT IS STRESS?
What does stress look like? It may be felt as heart palpitations – sometimes called “panic attacks”, or it may be a sense of being overwhelmed - having too much on one’s plate, not knowing where to start or not knowing how to handle a situation. Stress may be unapparent to us and may only manifest itself physically once it has reached a level that our body can longer endure – sometimes called a burnout.
You can’t make stress disappear completely; it would be like expecting sadness or evil to no longer exist, it is just part of our world. It is how we decide to handle our response to stress or how we choose to prevent some instances of stress that makes a difference. Notice my use of words: we “decide” how to handle stress, and we “choose” to prevent it –managing stress is completely a matter of choice. You are responsible for your own successes and your own failures, your own happiness and your sadness. Only you can make the decision to manage your stress and regain control of your life.
Let’s make sure we understand what stress is; stress is an emotional reaction, a reaction that brings out the powerful fight or flight instinct. If this emotion reoccurs too often, it leaves us with a surcharge of the Cortisol hormone which, in turn, will render us unable to concentrate or be productive and possibly feel physically sick.
You control your life and its stress level every time you react to something that happens in your day; you decide to either get angry or let it go. Therefore it is your thoughts, your reactions and your behaviour that have the most powerful and immediate impact on controlling your everyday stress. The fastest and most effective way to prevent stress is to be aware of your emotions and shift your reactions to the positive.
5 STEP GUIDE TO MANAGING STRESS
My goal today is to give you a guide that will support you to effectively manage your daily stress in the fastest way possible. This guide was developed through personal experience and awareness I have built throughout the years in my human development education, my professional experience in managing individuals, teams and projects as well as from experience gained in my coaching practice. I hope you incorporate these steps into your personal and professional life as soon as possible – have fun with them, each one of these steps are simple and the benefits are extremely rewarding.
| 5 STEP GUIDE TO MANAGING STRESS |
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- KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING
If you don’t know where you are going, you will be walking wherever the road takes you and you may wake up one day feeling extremely dissatisfied or stressed about the level of discontent in your present life. Be it at work or in your personal life, you need to be clear on the desired outcome. Knowing where you want to be, and by when you want to get there, helps you to make the right decision the first time around. It helps you take decisions that will bring you where you want to be the fastest way possible, so that you may wake up every day and know that even though you have not reached your destination, you are on course to arrive. It is part of being organized, not in the “put everything in its place” kind of way, but in the way that allows you to know what next step needs to be taken so you may succeed. Are you in the right job? Is your team performing as you wish it would? Are you happy with whom you are? This is your opportunity to ask yourself these questions and take appropriate action – knowing what you want and being on track to get there reduces your level of stress.
- EMOTIONAL AWARENESS
| Emotional Awareness Cycle | |
| 1st question: | How am I feeling? |
| 2nd question: | If I am feeling negative or feeling uneasy, why am I feeling this way? |
| 3rd question: | What should I do to change my feelings/emotions? |
| Return several times throughout the day to the 1st question and continue the cycle. | |
It’s important to know how you are feeling. Most of us are so busy “doing” all day and reacting to events that we don’t consider how our decisions and responses are affecting us until it’s too late and we have a stressful reaction.
The Emotional Awareness Cycle is an exercise I myself follow on a regular basis throughout the day. I stop myself several times throughout the day and notice how I am feeling. You may “feel” your stress on your back, your neck or shoulders, I feel my stress in the pit of my stomach, so I take time to notice how my stomach is feeling and I ask: How am I feeling at this moment? If I am stressed, I will have a feeling of uneasiness, a knot or butterflies in the pit of my stomach, and then I know something is bothering me, I need to figure out what it is and take action. Regularly asking how you are feeling allows you to prevent a stressful situation from occurring or to mange stress before it becomes too difficult to manage.
It may take time before you are clear on what is bothering you. It may take a few trials before being able to target the main reason for your “uneasiness”. What you are doing is taking the time to ask yourself what could be bothering you and taking action before the situation brings about a much higher level of stress. Ask how you are feeling, if feeling uneasy find out why and make the adjustments necessary, then ask again, how am I feeling, and continue so forth. Start by asking these questions three times a day, when you wake up, in the middle of your day and before going to bed. As I mentioned, it is not always easy to understand why we are stressed, and this is when working with a certified coach can be a valuable asset to speed up the process of knowing what is wrong so you can then take the right steps to make a change. You can work on your own, and with time and patience, you will figure out what is bothering you, what is not right and what you need to change to be able to stop feeling stressed.
- CHANGE YOUR RESPONSES
How you decide to handle a situation determines how you will feel and hence determines your stress level. Granted, some situations make us want to yell and take defensive action but are the results really worth it? You may be able to get the same results through a calmer demeanour or maybe you could decide to simply accept the situation and let it go – not even confront it. What would be better for you in the long run? We always have a choice on how we respond to any situation; deciding to respond calmly, deciding not to respond to it or deciding to take some time before responding may be the best solution to managing your stress.
- TAKE TIME OFF
This is the step that seems to be the most difficult to achieve – take time off. How many times have you heard people say: “I just returned from a week’s vacation and I am more tired now than when I left” or “I would need a month off to really be able to unwind and re-charge my batteries!”. Chances are even if you would take a month off just to return to the same work/life pace, you would find yourself just as tired within a few months. The answer seems to lie in taking several breaks throughout the year in conjunction with a normal vacation. We are always on the go – go, go, go at work to meet all our deadlines, go, go, go on the weekends, to make the most of our “free” time, we leave no time to truly relax. I invite you to take at least one day off a week where you do nothing, no work, no emails, no thinking of work, no engagements with friends or family. One day where you simply enjoy your day, either playing with the kids, not through planning an activity but just being with them in the moment, read a book, go for a walk, sleep in, visit your town like you were a tourist, do what relaxes you and nothing else. It’s a little regular re-charge that will allow you to keep going between vacations without feeling burned out. It helps bring balance to your life.
- TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY, MIND AND SOUL
Just like you take care of your car and home so it may provide you with transport and shelter, you need to take care of your body, mind and soul so it may provide you with the energy, creativity and inspiration you need to get everything done.
You take care of yourself first so you are then able to take care of the people you love and reach your most desired goals. Here are some suggestions as to how to take care of what is most important: you.
| SUGGESTIONS TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY, MIND AND SOUL | |
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Managing your life is not only about developing a timesheet telling you to exercise from 8:00-8:30am; habits need to be modified, core values need to be defined, mindsets and beliefs need to shift. It is not an easy task to take up on your own. In order to let success and happiness into your life, you need to make serious life shifts and get out of your own way (stop sabotaging yourself). This is what I do as a life coach; I support you to become aware of how you want your life to look like. Do you know what a life free of constant stress looks like to you? I help you overcome personal obstacles and challenges that stop you from realizing the changes necessary to have better control of yourself and your life. I help you master your emotions and reactions and I bring about the element of accountability that supports you in making changes and sustaining new ways of being.
EXTRA VALUE!!!!!
Because I really want you to know how to manage your stress, I have decided to share with you, for FREE, a coaching method I use to help clients reach their goals, be it managing stress or improving their team’s performance. This method motivates you to start making changes, inspires you to sustain those changes, and helps you remain accountable throughout the process.
You can use this method on your own but, for the sake of giving yourself extra accountability, I invite you to inform a friend of the changes you intend to make and when you intend to make them. Stay in touch with that friend and give them permission to ask you how you are doing.
METHOD FOR REACHING YOUR GOALS
1. Have a vision
2. Know who you are becoming
3. Clarify why this is important to you and build positive beliefs
4. Define actions to take and skills to use and acquire
5. Change your environment
This guide, called the logical levels, was inspired by a method used in the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) field, psychotherapy and coaching. It was developed by Mr. Robert Dilts as a way to shift beliefs and support people to reach their goals. Some of his behavioural methods are used today in Apple Computer’s Special Delivery Software.
- HAVE A VISION
Start by knowing what you want. As mentioned, in the “5 step guide to managing stress”, you always need to start by knowing where you are going. So take the time to close your eyes and build a vision of what your life would look like at home and at work if you were managing your stress. See yourself incorporating each one of the 5 steps previously mentioned and notice what each one of those scenarios looks like. The more you envision what you want, the easier it will be to achieve it.
- KNOW WHO YOU ARE BECOMING
In your vision, what type of person are you? It is important to know who you want to become so you can then know what actions to take in order to get there. So while envisioning your life as someone who knows how to manage and prevent stress, take the time to notice who you have become in that vision and what has changed about you.
- CLARIFY WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT TO YOU AND BUILD POSITIVE BELIEFS
In this step, you contemplate what will motivate you to develop new habits and take new steps to manage stress through clarifying why making this change is important to you and how it will change your life. What will you gain by reaching this goal?
Sometimes, we are our own biggest obstacle to reaching our goals. Limiting thoughts and negative beliefs stop you from taking the necessary steps to make a change. So it is important to ask yourself: what do I need to be telling myself to be able to reach my vision? Take time to think through these questions and get deeply inspired by their answers. Your inspiration is your fuel to success.
By answering these first three questions, you are developing inspiration and motivation to support you through developing new habits and making changes.
Too often people are looking for a Band-Aid solution, a quick breathing exercise that they can do when feeling stressed, in the hopes that they can quickly return to what they were doing. That doesn’t work in the long run - it’s a great emergency method, but to be able to prevent or control diseases and ailments derived from stress, you need to change your way of being. And to change your ways, you need to be inspired and motivated. So build a vision that inspires you! Take the time to understand what managing stress would really bring to your life, your loved ones and even to your community. Inspiration is the key to succeeding.
- DEFINE ACTIONS TO TAKE AND SKILLS TO USE AND ACQUIRE
Are you clear on what you need to do to manage stress and live out your vision? The “5 step guide to managing stress” should be a great source of knowledge and your vision may have even more meaningful answers for you on how to manage stress your own way. If you are still missing some answers on how to go about controlling your stress level, ask around, get educated. Once you know what actions you need to take, decide when you will take these actions. How frequently will you perform these tasks, and do you need to use or develop specific skills to be able to take the steps you have defined? Share your action plan with a friend to help you stay accountable.
- CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT
By this point you are inspired by the life you want to create and by who you are becoming. You are motivated by being clear on what you will gain by living this way and you have defined a new way of thinking and new action steps to be able to reach your goal of managing stress. You even have dates and time slots for your action steps.
All you are missing now is to make small changes to your surroundings so your new way of being will be supported. This may mean staying away from some groups or people, or visiting some family members less often. It may mean going to the library to read more on stress management or other topics that can support you in feeling happier, or it may mean preparing a meditation corner for yourself so it is available to you when you decide to re-center yourself through quieting the mind.
CONCLUSION
What I have just given you are powerful tools that will support you in managing your stress and achieve any goal. Making a change on your own is not always easy. Changing habits, beliefs, and overcoming self-obstacles can be more strenuous than expected. If you find yourself in that predicament, a certified coach may be the best support you can give yourself. My mission is to empower people to reach their goals in the fastest way possible and through supporting them to become self-aware and self-directed so they may quickly return to making changes on their own. Contact me if you would like to know more about how I can help you.
If you would like to try these tools on your own, you may be interested in purchasing my e-book on how to reach your goals. The e-book explains the method I have just described in greater detail and offers worksheets and examples for you to use to easily reach any of your goals; be it to manage stress, make a change in your profession, better manage a team or simply live the life you want and be who you want to be. If you are interested in purchasing this book or if you would like to know more about how I can help you, please email me at gaby@gabydasilva.com or call me at 1-450-458-4341 – the first session is always FREE!
A coach inspires you, motivates you and supports you to finally live the life you want and be who you want to be.
Cheers!
Gaby Da Silva
Certified Professional Coach, ACC
Live the life you want
Be who you want to be
