These days stress is widespread among people. We all are struggling to manage our stress. Reasons for stress can be anything like future worries, any past incidence, disease (of yours or your family member’s), a sensitive mind, loneliness, or access amount of work. Everybody has different mechanisms to deal with their stress level. But when under stress, we tend to forget what is the way out. Stress management is vital since your stress will affect your family members too. So in order to help people in dealing with their day-to-day stress, I have discovered some techniques. Those techniques have helped me, and I am sure they will help you manage your stress as well.
Listen to music to reduce your stress
Image by PourquoiPas from Pixabay
Music is a great way to be free from your stress and worries. Many types of research have been conducted and it is proven that music elevates your mood, motivates you, and reduces your stress. It makes you free and relaxed. So make habit of listening to music for at least 5 minutes a day, or when you are in stress.
According to the book, THE SECRET, negative thoughts attract negative situations, and positive thoughts attract positive situations. (This is a universal law – the law of attraction). When you are under stress, you have all negative thoughts about people and situations that happened in past or according to you may happen in the future. Music will first help you feel relaxed and stress-free. Once you are in a stress-free state you can change your thoughts to positive ones. (Furthur in this post, I will tell you how can you change your thoughts to positive ones). Once you are stress-free, you will be able to look at your problem (that causing you stress) in a new way and can easily solve it.
Click here to read the full summary of the book THE SECRET
5 positive effects music has on our mental health
Be in the present moment to reduce your stress
The reason for most of our suffering lies in our thinking process. If you start observing your thinking process then you will realize that you are most of the time wondering about the past or the future but never in the present moment. While being in past you might be regrating about some people or events. While in the future being anxious about a future event that may or may not happen.
To overcome your stress, be in the present moment as much as you can. Trust me, it is not an easy task. As a years-long habit, you will always wonder in past or in present. To help yourself be in the present moment, you have to become the gatekeeper of your thoughts. You need to start observing your thoughts and being aware of them. The moment you caught yourself not being in the present moment come back to the present. Keep doing this as much as possible. The idea here is, that you have to learn to tame your monkey mind otherwise it will start controlling you.
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
– SENECA –
I totally understand that being in the present moment is not an easy task, it needs some practice on regular basis. Till the time you gain that skill, you can practice NON-Judgment which I have mentioned in the next point.
Practice NON-Judgment for stress management
As is in human nature we easily fall into judging others, and any situation. It might be difficult to not judge. The same happens in our minds. Any thought comes, and we immediately start giving energy to it and end up judging it. In order to reduce stress, decide not to give energy to thoughts that come to your mind. Lets thoughts come and go unattended by you. You just become the observer of your thoughts. I know it is not easy, since our minds are not trained to do that. But not impossible. (Techniques discussed further in this post will help you practice non-judgment)
Minimize decision-making in day-to-day life
In a day we take so many decisions. That includes easy ones like what to eat, what to cook, what to wear for work etc to complex ones like business proposals or work-related decisions. Studies suggest that an adult person makes approx 35000 decisions per day consciously or unconsciously. Decision-making slowly drains your energy levels down. You can avoid some level of decision making where ever possible. Try to avoid simple everyday decision-making like what to cook or what to eat by fixing the menu for a week and what to wear by pre-deciding clothes a week in advance. If you observe your lifestyle, you may find many decisions that you might pre-decide well in advance, so go for those and reduce your decision-making to a day.
Photo by Liza Summer from Pexels
Don’t Keep Quiet – Talk/Discuss/Share it out with others
Some problems in life become major sources of stress in our life. But sometimes what bothers us most is, not the problem itself but it’s an anytime triggering thought process due to that problem that has the power to bother our peace of mind. It only needs one negative thought to start the chain of negative thoughts. Sometimes we only need to empty our minds by discussing things or by sharing what bothering us with others. Once what bothering us is out of our mind, the mind is empty and it has no or less power to give us stress.
In Shreemad Bhagavad Geeta as well, Lord Krishna before start guiding Arjun, first chose to listen to Arjun about what is that which is bothering him (i.e. Adhyaay 1: Arjun Vishad Yog). The idea here is, that if your mind is already full of worries, fear, anxiety, and doubt then you cannot fill it with any new thing. If Shree Krishna had started guiding straight away to Arjun (without listening to him first), then Arjun would not be able to absorb the guidance. The great guidance of Shree Krishna is worthless if Arjun’s mind is full of negativity and doubt.
The lesson here is, to fill your glass with new things, you have first empty it. So if something is bothering you, try to share it with any friends or family members. You do not need to seek a solution to your problem from them but just share your problem so that you can feel light in your heart and make yourself relax. Then you can fill your mind with positive thoughts or might be able to see your problem from a new angle that helps you to solve it.
Click here – Free Classes to learn Shreemad Bhagavad GEETA
Don’t shy away from crying if you feel like it. Sometimes just crying only can make you feel light in your heart and relax you. After crying you may realize you are feeling so much relief.
Count Your Blessings: Practice Gratitude
At any given point in time, if you decide to count your blessings, you will realize that you have plenty of them. Like you have food on your plate, a roof over your head, a family that cares for you, friends by your side, and many more things to be thankful for. These are the things that make you fortunate from the people who do not have those basic things. Once you start counting your blessing, your mental shift starts to happen from negative to positive. Once your mind starts to become positive, it starts attracting positive things and positive situations (Remember, as mentioned in the book THE SECRET)
Affirmations to help you think positively in stressful situations
As mentioned, GRATITUDEÂ is being grateful and thankful for what you already have in your life. AFFIRMATIONS are one step ahead of them, in which you become thankful and grateful for things that you may or may not already have in your life. It is like you are already being thankful for the things you don’t have and for all feelings of having them in your life.
Below are some examples of affirmations.
- “Thank you, GOD, for my good health”
- “I am thankful for my good result”
- “I am grateful that, now my relationship with my cousin is getting better day by day.”
There are 2 important rules to create affirmation sentences
- Your affirmations statement must be in the PRESENT TENSE.
- It must NOT be in a NEGATIVE sentence.
Whenever you feel stressed you can say those affirmation statements. While you say it, you must feel it as you have already got it. This will help you change your negative thinking process to a positive one. A positive mind can attract more positive things and deal with any situation in a better way.
Use visualization techniques to manage your stress
Visualization is a powerful technique in which you imagine that things are happening the way you wanted them to in your mind. It is like running a positive image or movie in our mind of how things should happen. It feels just like daydreaming.
For example, you are worried about your exam result and feeling stressed about it. Then in order to practice visualization to be free from the stress of the result, sit in a relaxed place, close your eyes, and imagine that you have got your result in your hand. You have scored very well, and you are calling your family members and friends to share the news. They are congratulating you. On way to home, you got sweets for family members.
By running a positive mental image of the situation in your mind, you will be able to empty your mind of negative thoughts and stress. And can fill your mind with a positive image of what you want and how you want the situation to go. After running a positive picture of what you wanted in your mind, you will start feeling positive. Fear, anxiety, and stress will go away. Remember positive thoughts attract positive situations.
One spoiler alert: Don’t run negative images in your visualization for yourself or others, since it will impact you only.
Hope the points mentioned in this post will become helpful to you as much as it had helped me. Please share this post with a maximum so that more and more people can use this technique to manage their stress in their day-to-day life. I love to hear your thoughts on this, please do share your thoughts in the comment below. If you have more techniques that help you overcome your stress then please do share them in the comments. Please note these are some basic techniques to overcome day-to-day life stress, if you have some severe problem then consult a doctor. If you want more such posts straight into your inbox then please consider subscribing to this blog.
