How to Enjoy Life by Managing Stress

Stress is a problem that affects increasing numbers of people all over the world, and it can have a major impact on both your physical and mental health. If you’re suffering from chronic stress, you become caught in a cycle of increasing pressure causing sleeplessness, fatigue, and general malaise, which makes everything hard work, thereby adding to your stress burden. In the end, something has to give, and for many people, it’s their mental well being that comes out worst.

stress management

How do you reduce stress?

One main way to beat stress is to put the fun back into your life. Going out with friends, taking a vacation, visiting family, having a night out at the cinema or theatre; the possibilities are endless. If you haven’t got the time to take a trip away, there are many ways you can unwind at home of an evening, for instance playing an online casino game on sites like Unibet can be highly enjoyable and distract you from your stresses very effectively. Or if you enjoy reading, you could join a local book club, losing yourself in a new novel every month and then spending a pleasant evening discussing it with a group of interesting fellow readers.

The good news is that the effects of chronic stress can be reversed, so however awful you feel now, you can recover and lead a less stressful life. Health Direct discuss finding the ways that work for you in managing your stress. You might need to try several different ways of relaxing before you find the optimum methods.

The widespread recommendation to try relaxation therapies such as meditation and mindfulness, yoga, spa treatments, and so on are all excellent ways to learn to relax and are worth trying. If you feel uncomfortable with one approach, try another; there are different forms of yoga for example, that don’t emphasise the spiritual side or combination classes that take elements from different disciplines and combine them to make a less intimidating approach.

Is all stress a bad thing?

Stress in itself isn’t a problem; in fact, it’s an essential component of being able to cope with life and do well. You might not need to be pumped with adrenaline in order to escape a marauding predator as your primitive ancestors would have, but that same jolt of adrenaline makes you sharper and more focused when you need to perform well in everyday life.

The problem arises when the day to day stresses you encounter become so numerous that you don’t get any relief from the physical effects of having powerful hormones like adrenaline and cortisol pumped into your system. A brief dose every now and then won’t do any harm, but like everything else, in excess, these stress hormones can be harmful, as pointed out by HuffPost. If you’re not getting a break from stress, you enter a state where you’re chronically affected by a continual overdose of stress hormones, making life hard work and inviting mental health problems like depression and anxiety.

Unless you find ways to get your stress response back to normal and lower the levels of stress hormones in your body, you’ll find everything a struggle, so get a grip on managing stress and put the happy back in your life.

Judy

I am sixty years old and have raised six adult children.

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