5 most common stress questions answered - PART 1
Three experts talk about ways to reduce stress in order to change your life. Watch this video to learn ways to change your stress level.
Transcript
[SOFT MUSIC]
Before you can reduce stress, you have to understand what stress is and how it impacts your life.
Natural methods to reduce stress are numerous. One of the first ones that I always recommend as a psychologist is your perception of stress.
Flip the script and trick the devil. It's all about the perception. Secondly, look at exercise, releasing endorphins,
the feel-good hormones that help you to conquer that stress. You should look at changing your diet
and eating fruits and vegetables that help you build up your physical and emotional immune system
in order to ward off a lot of that stress. Look at getting a better night's sleep. If you are getting those Z's, if you are getting enough
of that REM sleep, then certainly, you'll feel better in the following day.
[SOFT MUSIC] It's almost as though the tea itself becomes your object of meditation,
something to focus on. So having a cup of tea in the day, whether it's first thing in the morning, perhaps mid-morning, or even at
the end of the day, is a great way to set up almost a ritual of Zen. The more we get into our senses, our physical senses, the less
we're involved in the thinking, in the mind. So we can't be thinking about something and at the same time
smelling it or tasting it. So start off by just-- after you've poured the hot water into the tea,
just take a moment before you even pick the cup up. Take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth just to settle yourself,
just to ground yourself. Perhaps you're watching the steam rising from the tea. Pick the cup up in your hands.
Feel the warmth of it. Enjoy that feeling of warmth. Smell it.
What does it remind you of? Is it a pleasant sensation? And then slowly bring it to your mouth and take a taste.
Notice where in the mouth you taste it. Notice the sensation, the warmth. And sometimes, if you're really attentive,
you can even feel the water as it travels down towards the stomach. So just by taking this time, by building
in this ritual around tea, and it only need take a few minutes, you have those little moments
throughout the day. It almost creates some stability of Zen throughout the day where you come back to that ritual
again and again. [SOFT MUSIC] One thing that I always say to people is, find a way to cut corners.
One of the things we've talked about is this idea of being a good enough caregiver rather than the super caregiver.
And that really may mean that sometimes you cut corners. You order dinner out. You purchase the birthday cake.
You have someone else pick the kids up from school. Sometimes, cutting those corners and not feeling that you have to be perfect,
which is very much a head game-- but if you can let that down and let that go, sometimes that can be a way of saying, I can handle this.
Another thing I really strongly suggest to people is that you not try to create a to-do list that's 100 items long
or have 50 priorities that day because you are guaranteeing that you will fail. So a real key then becomes that you
have this rule of three, which is three key priorities that you must get through that day. Those could be work deadlines.
They may be related to your children. They may be related to an older parent that you're taking care of. You must get those done.
And once those are done, probably everything else will fall into place, or maybe not-- that you will find ways to cut corners,
for example, to get dinner on the table so you get the deadline done. But I do think it's about keeping those priorities manageable, finding ways
to cut corners, and more than anything, allowing yourself to realize that good enough is more than enough.
stress management
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