Introduction
Stress is a combination of three things; (1) a potential threatening stressor, (2) your inability to deal with the threat, and (3) a response that mobilizes energy to fight or flee from the threat.
Anything can be a potential stressor and trigger a stress response under the right circumstances. All potential stressors have one thing in common; they threaten you somehow. What your mind tells you about your ability to deal with the threat certain whether or not it triggers a stress response.
To beat your stress and thrive, not just survive in a stressful world, you need a stress management program that does three things:
– Release the power of your mind to stop thinking stressful
– gets rid of stress-related tension and energy in a healthy way
– turns your stressors into challenges that motivate you, instead of stressing you
cope with stress
Years ago, I developed a program for conquering stress called The Five Rs of Coping that does all three. The program uses five different levels of coping that will teach you how to conquer your stress and thrive in an ever-changing, fast-paced world.
Tea five rs are:
– Rethink
– take it easy
– Reduce
– Release
– Reorganize
Each R contains several different strategies that work independently or can be combined to make a comprehensive personal stress management plan.
Rethink
Reconsider strategies for overcoming your stress. Use the power of your mind to short-circuit the stress response before it even starts. Your brain is a powerful organ that can create and overcome stress. When you are exposed to a potential stressor, your mind instantly answers two questions:
- “Is this threatening or harmful to me?”
- “Can I face it?”
If the answers are; “yes, it’s threatening” and “no, I can’t deal with it” your brain will instantly trigger a stress response. The answers your mind gives to these two questions will determine whether or not you will be stressed. Often what your mind tells you about these two questions is inaccurate, illogical, and useless.
Reframing strategies work by helping you understand how your mind works when you think about stress. You can learn to short-circuit your stress response by changing the way you think about the unhelpful messages your mind is giving you about threatening and harmful situations and your ability to handle them.
take it easy
Relaxation Strategies to Conquer Your Stress teaches you how to activate a relaxation response that puts your body into a relaxed state and cancels out the effects of stress. Because the relaxation response is the exact opposite of the stress response, you can’t be stressed and relaxed at the same time.
When you put your body in a relaxed state on a regular basis, you cancel out all the harmful effects of stress (increased blood pressure, hormone release, muscle tension, etc.). In a sense, this is like recharging batteries when stress drains them of energy. Relaxation strategies like diaphragmatic breathing, breath meditation, and visualization are easy to learn and will slow down your racing mind and relax your tense muscles.
Release
Release strategies to conquer your stress by providing a positive physical outlet for the energy and muscular tension produced by the stress response. The stress response has to do with mobilizing energy to fight or flee from stressors. This energy and the tension it creates makes you nervous and makes it difficult to focus, concentrate and sleep at night.
Release strategies like vigorous exercise and sex are healthy outlets that use up this energy and release this tension in beneficial ways. Making sure you release the byproducts of stress on a regular basis helps you regain focus and the ability to rest and sleep when you need to.
Reduce
Reduction strategies teach you how to minimize the amount of stress in your life while maximizing the things you are passionate about. Reduction strategies teach you how to turn your stressors into challenges. Most people spend a lot of valuable time on activities and thoughts that drain their energy and create stress. By reducing the volume of these stressors in your life, you can free up the time and energy you want and need to focus on the things that you are passionate about and that challenge you.
When you are involved in too many meaningless activities and have too many useless demands on your time, you become overloaded and begin to lose your zest for life and the ability to have fun. Reduction strategies teach you how to find the perfect balance between work and play, and how to start feeling passionate and challenged about life again.
Reorganize
Reorganization strategies to conquer stress revolve around resilient health habits that make you more resilient to stress. Good health habits give you more energy and other resources to cope with stress. For example, a key resilient health habit is getting 30 minutes of exercise a day.
Experts recommend combining resistance exercises like walking or jogging at a moderate pace with 8-10 strength training exercises like lifting weights. By incorporating this resilient health habit into your lifestyle, you’ll have more energy, need less sleep, and have greater mental focus. These three benefits will help you beat your stress. Other resilient health habits work the same way.
For more information on these Five R’s, please contact me using the information below.