Stress is something that all of us experience, but everyone handles it differently. Some people excel during stressful times, while others buckle under pressure, and still, others fall somewhere in between. The bottom line is that how you manage your stress can have a serious effect on your mental and physical health. Even if you thrive under pressure, you could be unknowingly stretching your body and mind beyond their limits.
Managing stress isn’t an art per se, but it does require a certain level of discipline, awareness, and the willingness to change. Here, we’ll talk about how to manage stress the right way, so you don’t feel overwhelmed or underwhelmed by the stress in your life.
What Is Stress?
Stress is a response by the body to external stimuli. Problems at work, with your spouse, deadlines to meet, or in a more primal world, that sabertooth tiger that’s been stalking you for three days, causes stress. When you’re stressed, your body releases stress hormones that help the body prepare to meet what it perceives to be a threat. The “fight, flight, or freeze” response is caused by stress, and it’s what’s kept humans alive for so many thousands of years.
Stress hormones can wreak havoc on the body’s internal systems, however. If they’re constantly coursing through your bloodstream, they can cause your heart to work harder more frequently, and stress is actually linked to poor heart health, among other ailments.
Managing Stress
Stress management helps reduce the effects of stress on the body and mind and puts you in control of how you handle the stressors in your life. If you’re constantly overreacting to stress, you can feel exhausted and mentally drained. Some people take CBD for relieving stress, exercise, or meditate, while others choose more dangerous methods like drugs and alcohol.
The healthier your methods are, the better off you’ll be in the long run. Let’s talk about some ways to manage stress without causing permanent damage to the body.
CBD Oil
CBD products are everywhere these days, and it’s because the compound Cannabidiol, or CBD, is an excellent stress and anxiety management tool. It’s also good for pain, inflammation, and a host of other ailments, but for the sake of this article, we’ll focus on its stress-relief effects.
Professionals, teachers, coaches, CEOs, and even parents are turning to CBD oil for stress-relief. The compound is non-psychoactive, so even though it’s derived from Cannabis, it won’t get you high. That means you can take it, gain the medicinal benefits from it, and still pass a drug test for work and not be impaired.
CBD oil can be infused into recipes, taken orally, or ingested via CBD gummies. Because of brands like Penguin CBD, the versatility, affordability, and availability of this effective compound make it an effective stress management tool.
Learn What Your Stressors Are
It’s entirely impossible to solve a problem if you can’t pinpoint what’s causing it to begin with. Look closer at where your stress comes from, and ask yourself, “Do I really know why I’m stressing out over this?” The answer to that question might not be what you think.
Are you stressing out overwork because you can’t meet a deadline, or because your boss is being a royal pain about it and causing you more anxiety? Are you stressed over this month’s bills because you’re truly not making enough, or because you bought a $300 handbag last Tuesday when you should’ve been paying the electric bill?
The first step to managing stress is to identify what’s stressing you out, and then eliminate as many stressors as possible. If your credit card balance causes you to nearly faint every month, maybe it’s time to downsize to a lower credit limit or pay it off and deactivate it. Sometimes, you can’t simply get rid of a stressor; you can’t exactly deactivate your spouse, now can you?
However, when it comes to personal relationships, communication is the key to getting to the bottom of your stress and solving it. Talk with your partner. Explain how and why they’re stressing you out. Working it out early will save you much more difficult situations in the future, and open the door to further communication between the two of you.
Learn That You Can’t Control Everything
This is perhaps one of the most important lessons in stress management. You must understand that not everything in your life is truly within your control. You can’t control that your car malfunctions, or that your spouse leaves you, or that the weather is rainy today, but changing how you respond to things that aren’t within your control can change your entire life. When you can’t change the things that cause you stress, instead change how you view them and what reactions you’ll allow yourself to have.
Let’s say you’re an atom bomb when it comes to stress. You blow up, get angry, and cause a scene. Is that healthy behavior? Does it do anyone any good? Sure, it might feel relieving in the short-term, but when you accidentally say the wrong thing or make a wrong move out of anger, you could regret it later.
You. Can’t. Control. Everything. It’s that simple. When things happen, understand whether or not they were within your control. If you told a lie and the consequences of that lie present themselves, that was within your control to prevent; but if someone else told a lie, and you’re suffering because of it, that’s not in your control.
It’s always best to take things with a calm approach and a positive attitude. Adversity almost always has some form of learning opportunity hidden within it, you just have to find it, identify it, and utilize it so as to avoid the same mistakes later on.
Don’t Be A Victim
You have a choice when it comes to the stress in your life: you can either be a victim of it or learn from it. That choice belongs to you alone, and when you choose the latter, you’ll find that your stress holds much more meaning and doesn’t negatively impact you nearly as much.