10 Ways to Deal Effectively with Stress

Stressed? No Way

As a human being, you need stress to thrive, excel and enjoy life. This is called positive stress. However, positive stress can become negative if it is not balanced and managed efficiently. Your goal is to aim for a positive stress phase and the best why is to turn negative into Positive

How to Deal With Negative Stress

Obviously, eliminating all forms of negative stress from our lives is simply not possible. Life just doesn’t work that way. However, we can do some very practical things to help ourselves deal more effectively and constructively with life’s not-so-positive circumstances. We don’t need to play helpless victim, letting negative situations have their way with our health. Dr. Nancy Appleton points out that “it’s not life’s situations, but how we deal with them, which determines whether we let stress become distress.”

What follows are ten ways to keep stress from becoming distress.

1. Recognize Stress: Spend some time trying to isolate and identify the major sources of negative stress in your life. Ask and answer the simple question, “What’s bothering me?” Make a list. Give yourself plenty of time to get in touch with the various areas in your life where negative stressors may be “eating” at you. It’s hard to fight an enemy you can’t quite identify. The following categories may help you to unlock specific areas of stress:

marital problems – child-raising problems – financial difficulties – pressures at work

too many commitments – lack of career direction – lack of purpose in life

feelings of social isolation – lack of acceptance from others 

2. Talk About Stress: Find a trusted friend or a group of such friends with whom you can be open and honest concerning these areas of negative stress. Dr. Mike Samuels observes that “support is the functional opposite of stress.” He lists the following reasons why social support increases health:

 • It gratifies emotional needs for security, affection, trust, intimacy, nurturing and a sense of belonging.

 • It helps in appraising and defining reality.

 • It makes people aware of shared norms of feeling and behaviour.

 • It increases group solidarity.

 • It increases self-esteem through social approval.

 
3. Turn to God for His Help and Peace: As part of helping people cope with stress better, Dr. Tessler says, “I am a firm believer in the need for human beings to spend time in religious and spiritual pursuits. . . . Take time to make a connection with the source of your life and be thankful for all your Creator has given you.”

Abraham Lincoln, no stranger to stress, was one who shared Dr. Tessler’s view on the importance of connecting with a higher force, God. It was during his administration as President of the United States that the whole country erupted into a self-destructive civil war. Of that tumultuous time in his life, Lincoln has said: “Amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance in God.” Later, when a delegation presented him with a Bible, he replied: “This great book is the best gift God has given to man. But for it we could not know right from wrong.”

4. Envision Yourself in Control: I have written many times before on the power of visualising the situation you desire. Researchers have found that people who have learned to see themselves as helplessly trapped in their circumstances are more likely than others to develop disease. “People, and even animals,” writes Dr. Samuels, “who believe that their actions have no affect on the outcome of a situation – that they have no control over their world – are more prone to illness.” On the other hand, those who practise seeing themselves in control over their situation reduce the negative effects of stress. By envisioning the power to make changes, you’re sending health-promoting messages to your body.

I experienced the importance of this mental attitude in my own battle with lung cancer, and for a non-smoker, a very stressful situation, indeed. I put my trust in the doctors and decided there and then that they would bring me through. And they did, with the support of family and friends.

5. Set Goals for Managing Stress: Make, and begin to work toward, short- and long-term goals in each of the areas of most significant negative stress to you. Because the joy of success breeds more success, start your changes with the areas of stress that you find the easiest to deal with.

6. Find Sources of Help: If you need it, get outside help that will enable you to move forward toward your goals. For instance, if you have money problems, you may want to consult with a professional financial advisor. If you’re experiencing parenting problems, maybe a family counselor could help you with better strategies for raising your children. There are professionals available to help you in every area of your life.

7. Exercise Daily: Exercise is a wonderful stress reducer. Some find that morning exercise helps to prepare them to handle the hassles of the day. Others prefer evening exercise as a form of winding down. Either way, exercise is vitally important to your body’s ability to withstand negative stress. Exercise lowers blood pressure, strengthens the heart, oxygenates your cells and improves your spirit. Studies have shown that those who exercise regularly feel more capable and confident of overcoming the negatives setbacks in life.

“It is an amazing concept that exercise can help ‘tune’ the body to cope with stress,” observes Dr. Samuels. “And it is particularly pertinent, and important, to men and women today whose health patterns are so greatly affected by stress.”

8. Get the Rest You Need: Quite simply, lack of sleep decreases our resistance to stress. Problems always seem smaller following a good night’s rest.

9. Eat Healthy: Follow the dietary suggestions I have written about in previous posts. What we feed our bodies does determine in large measure how they handle the effects of emotional stress. “Eating patterns can be modified in order to help a person cope with the stress of modern day living,” writes Gordon Tessler. “A body in optimum health is prepared for stress and able to respond with the needed energy to cope with life.”

10. Develop Hobbies or Other Relaxing Activities: Find something you really enjoy doing that will remove your mind from your problems periodically. Dr. Tessler predicts that “the doctor of the future will prescribe one hour a day of play to reduce stress and improve health.”

So go out there now and play for an hour or so. You will love the results.