How I fight against stress

With everything going on in the world right now and even just our daily lives can be filled with so many things which bring us stress. Either it is a boss who puts a lot of pressure on us, or its a child who falls sick, or maybe you lose a huge some of money, there is really no shortage of things which can really bring us stress. Its never good to have built up stress because the brain can’t manage being under stress for too long, you may have a mental break down which could lead you into a depression.

Its important to find a way to relieve yourself from all the stress and reduce the amount of pressure that is put on your brain else that will prevent you from thinking straight and making accurate decision. The more your stress builds up, the less rational your decisions become, you will just do whatever it takes to get relief from all that pressure which can often lead you into making bad decisions. Here are some tips on how to relief yourself from all the stress life puts on your shoulders, you can use a combination or even all of these tips to help you, keep in mind that the less stressed you are, the better the decisions you make. Nobody wants to make a decision under pressure, you never have the time to go through all the information which could be detrimental to your thinking.

Life is stress filled

The first thing is that you have to realize that life is full of stressful situations which you need to anticipate, most often we tend to neglect or ignore certain problems until they become urgent. Of course your car is going to break down someday, thats why you have a spare tire, of course your kids are going to fall sick someday, thats why you should have savings, of course your boss is going to pile work on your table, thats why you should have done your assignments in school. All these situations shouldn’t be any surprise for us, they are just common and we should be prepared for them, even if we can’t fully prepare for them, we can atleast anticipate that they are going to happen sometime in the future. Its always a constant possibility that someone might have an accident, thats why we get health insurance but if you neglect or ignore these necessary steps, then you are going to feel all the more stressed when that actually happens, but when you rehearsed for that scenario even just in your head, when it happens it will be less stressful. Like the saying goes

Pray for the best but expect the worst

Mute all the noise

We obviously can’t anticiapte everything that could potentially go wrong and things could just take us by surprise out of the blue. In those moments specifically when the problem isn’t urgent, I take the time to shut down all the noises around me and enter into a state of meditation. That really helps me put everything into perspective and recenter my ideas, when there is a problem or an emergency, people often are panicked and the keep throwing ideas from left to right, all these information can really drown a person. Its important to shut off all the noise around you and isolate yourself in your head in order to process the situation calmly. Remember that for most people, the brain can’t think accurately under stress, it will generally just look for the easiest solution, meanwhile the ideal solution would have required a little more consideration than that. A good example of this is when you have different priorities, if you decide to just focus on what is the most urgent at the moment, that might turn out to be a mistake because that could have a domino effect on the other things, rather take the time to consider things from a broader perspective and make sure you factor in every possibility.

Ask Someone else

Sometimes I feel so stressed that I don’t even know what to do, the pressure has already built up so much in me such that I can’t think straight anymore, in those times, its preferable to ask someone who can still think rationally, a person who still has his cognitive capacities unbiased by any external pressures. We often think that because its our problem, we bare the sole responsibility of solving it but sometimes it might rather be another person best suited to find the solution since this 3rd party is neutral and can see things from outside the box everybody else is found in. What builds up stress in us might be exponentially accentuated when we think about our kids, our family, our desires, our responsibilities but a neutral party could observe all these and decide what is the most rational thing to do which from our position we might find hard to do.

Asmr Videos (Relax)

A little trick I use is that I watch a lot of ASMR videos.

ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) is a relaxing, often sedative sensation that begins on the scalp and moves down the body. Also known as “brain massage,” it’s triggered by placid sights and sounds such as whispers, accents, and crackles.

These are videos specifically made to reduce stress, to mellow you out and help you relax, they are specifically designed to accomplish this. So after a long day of work, I just launch these videos in a row and they really get me relaxed in no time. There are different types of asmr videos, you can watch;

• ASMR shaving
• ASMR massages
• ASMR music
• ASMR Tapping
• ASMR Eating

There are so many categories so just see what works for you and go with it. I know at first it might sound crazy just to watch someone eating or shaving or massaging another person but trust me, it doesn work. There are also relaxing music and videos which don’t necessarily fall under these category, you could try those too. ASMR always delivers on that relaxing feel.

Release Pressure

A very important point about stress is identifying where the stress comes from, for example I have a friend of mine who would call me to urgently borrow money to do one or two things, he will put so much pressure on me because the situation is urgent for him, he probably waited for the situation to become critical before coming to me for help. In that situation you have to realize that someone else is trying to transfer their stress on you, will you be willing just to take in all that stress? I realized that the urgency wasn’t on me, it was on him and he was trying to make it my problem instead, I didn’t do anything wrong to end up stressed but rather someone else was trying to pass on their stress to me. These situations happen all the time, that has even become a way people use to relieve themselves from their stress but by so doing, they harm others. You have to be smart enough to identify where the pressure is coming from and relieve yourself from that pressure (or plainly refuse to take in that pressure), don’t let somebody else’s stress become yours, somebody else’s pressure become your pressure and by so doing put yourself under a lot of stress.

Think Proactively

The last point is thinking proactively, sometimes there is no way of knowing what could possibly go wrong. Things might stir in unexpected ways by which you may have no possible control over, there would be no way of anticipating what is going to happen. What you want to do in such situations is to realize that since you can’t avoid the punch, you might aswell become strong enough to withstand it. Prepare yourself for the worst possible scenarios where things go totally wrong and how you may react to that situation. Consider this as “the emergency drill”, we all know what to do when a building is on fire, you can’t anticipate when a building might go up in flames but you at the very least know what to do when that happens, in your life aswell prepare for such scenarios. I’m not going to list to you all what could go wrong in your life but depending on your circumstances and environment, you already have a clue of what could possibly go wrong.

Thanks for reading

Check out my blog realjema.com