A Guide To Becoming Stress Free

Handling Stress
Most people experience stress at some time in their lives. While many sufferers are able to handle it quite well, it's a serious issue for the vast majority, often ending in chronic illness. A lot of the stress we experience derives from the rapid tempo of present day lifestyles, and the expectations that goes with it.
However, many other factors could potentially cause stress and tension.
Situations That Can Bring High Levels Of Stress
At the end of the 60's 2 American physchologists Holmes and Rahe made a list of stress factors. These are the most typical stress situations that any person can experience:
- Death of a spouse
- Partners break-up
- Divorse or separation
- Being sent to jail
- A close family members death
- An accident or serious illness
- Getting married
- Getting fired
- Returning to the job market
- Becoming a pensioner
- Being pregnant
- Problems with sex life
- Changing jobs
- Money problems
This list by no means ends here, but shows the most common stress factors in general for the majority of people.
Prioritizing Things in Your Life
Prioritizing both work and family first, before taking care of yourself can often lead to stress? You're most likely also narrowing down your own leisure time, to take care of your job, domestic chores and your family members.
If this sounds familiar, you belong to this group, and could be stressed because:
- you can not live up to your ambitions and own expectations. For example. you've not yet learned to play golf, even though you promised yourself that you would learn that three years ago.
- you don't have time to do things you've set your mind on. For example, four years ago you decided to read a certain book, but you've still not put aside time for yourself to read it.
The feeling is that you don't have a life. Frustration and at the same time guilt of thinking of yourself first.
The Effects of Stress
Conquer or Prevent
So how can we conquer, or better still, prevent it altogether? The main 3 parts to this are:
- physical exercise
- healthy diet
- adequate rest
Physical Exercise
Physical exercise won't only reduce stress and tension, it will get your body and mind away from your troubles, which is actually very beneficial.
Exercising aerobically is ideal; going for walks is especially beneficial. Many studies have demonstrated that it can have a remarkable, positive influence on stress levels.
Healthy Diet
An unhealthy diet can also result in stress, therefore bettering your dietary habits can be very beneficial in avoiding stress.
Part of a healthy diet is ensuring you obtain adequate minerals and vitamins such as B1, B2, B3, B6 and B12. Vitamin C is additionally necessary for a good immune system, that performs a crucial role in terms of stress, and then finally, vitamin D is effective in many ways.
An excessive amount of saturated fats in a diet carries a harmful impact in terms of stress and tension.
Smoking and alcohol are also harmful, even though many sufferers turn to alcohol, drugs and tobacco when things start getting stressful, which sadly will only make the problem worse.
Getting Adequate Sleep
One of the primary triggers of stress is insufficient sleep. Getting sufficient rest can help to alleviate stress. The majority of people need to have a minimum of seven hours each night. Insufficient sleep can ultimately result in melancholy along with other illnesses.
Essentially the most essential things you need to do if you're encountering stress is always to try to relax. Relaxing practices are consequently of huge benefit in alleviating stress. A number of the more well known are generally: meditating, massage therapy, having a hot bath, visualization and music.
Conclusion
There's no time like the present to try to handle stress and you are the only person that can make the changes necessary. If you need inspiration, read '10 years younger in 10 weeks' by author Thorbjörg Hafsteinsdottirs that you can find on Amazon or another one that focuses on your well-being. Then you're actually already well under way to a stress free life.
Related sites on Well Being and Stress
- Quality of life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quality of life is the degree of well-being felt by an individual or group of people. Unlike standard of living, quality of life is not a tangible concept, and therefore cannot be measured directly. - Health and well-being : Directgov
Find information on health services, healthy living and more - What is wellbeing
In a world of seemingly endless options, what choices will make us happier? Studies of happiness show that the following things all enhance our wellbeing
© 2008 Lucy Jones

