Lifestyle Inspiration, Savvy YouSucceed in 2017: Practice Good Stress Management
It’s a whole new year. Like you, I feel refreshed, full of energy and ready to get things rolling.
I’ve tried to set goals, psyche myself and anticipate obstacles like a good planner should. And of all the obstacles that come to mind, none seems as potentially damaging as poor stress management and I’ll tell you why.
One way to situate yourself when planning is to see yourself as having things already working in your favour and things that aren’t so favourable. Your plan must then include maintaining the things that are working while trying to address the things that aren’t.
Poor stress management is potentially a big problem because it can disrupt our ability to exploit our positives and build on progress made. It can disrupt our ability to do the very things that are helping us achieve our goals, never mind the things that are working against us.
According to WebMD, Stress is a very physical response to harmful situations. The stress response, also known as ‘fight or flight’, is triggered by the release of certain hormones in the body. In this state, our heart rate increases, our muscles tighten and our blood pressure rises. [Read More about Stress]
When we talk about being stressed, we’re referring to the mental, psychological or physical strain we experience in difficult situations.
Stress makes us less productive in a number of ways. When we’re stressed. it’s difficult to maintain the clarity and focus required to perform optimally. While doctors say that some stress is good, they all agree that prolonged stress is very damaging to human health. Prolonged stress can damage key organs like the brain, heart and kidneys. Stress has been scientifically linked to reduced immunity, Hypertension, Stroke and Depression.
This is why having a good plan for dealing with stress is probably the best thing we can do for our productivity in 2017.
As a Solopreneur, I have a lot that I’d like to accomplish. I’ve set productivity targets that I’d like to hit again and again. I continue to practice the time boosting technique I discussed here and I apply the principles of self-awareness I learned while researching some of my favourite posts from last year.
Without good stress management however, all this will be to no avail. Here are 5 things I think we can do to manage stress and keep our productivity up throughout 2017.
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Find Real Solutions to Stress Causing Problems
Lingering problems often cause us lingering stress. In the spirit of the new year, make every effort to find a lasting solution to one major stress-causing issue in your life. Do this and you may be surprised by what you’ll accomplish before the year runs out.
Task yourself with finding real, lasting solutions to spare yourself the draining effects of stress. You don’t have to do this alone. Consult others and if you’d like to keep your problems private, use the internet. And while on the internet, go beyond Google. Use Quora and Reddit to ask questions (I believe you can do so anonymously) and many experts will provide answers and make suggestions.
If financial insecurity is the main cause of stress in your life, use this time to work out a strategy that could help you land a better paying job or develop multiple income streams.
If you’re worried about your health, then now’s the time to commit to eating healthy, exercising and doing your regular check-ups.
The bottom line is this: Work at finding a solution and even if you don’t find a magic bullet, your effort could significantly improve your wellbeing in 2017.
HMJServices is a jewellery and lifestyle brand based in Abuja, Nigeria. Subscribe to receive blog updates.
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Know The Signs of Growing Stress
It’s impossible to eliminate all stress, no matter how hard we try. Leading a completely stress-free life is also impossible in part because stress is relative. What causes me mental and emotional strain will probably not be the same for you.
To manage stress well, we need to know how to spot the signs of stress. It’s about self-awareness. It’s about understanding our bodies and our emotional responses.
The signs of stress vary in scale. Some are as small and negligible as general irritability. Others can be a bit debilitating. Headaches, muscle aches, difficulty concentrating, tiredness, muscle spasms, frequent urination, stuttering, being unusually indecisive, etc are all signs of stress.
When we’re able to recognize the signs of stress and indeed, the severity of the stress we’re experiencing, we’ll be able to take better action to help ourselves. The idea is to never allow ourselves be stressed so much that we experience Burnout. No one is immune to burnout. So learn to read your body’s signs of stress and know when you need more relief than a few tablets of aspirin can provide.
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Anticipate Stressful Situations and Plan Ahead
Like I mentioned earlier, it’s impossible to eliminate all stress. For most of us, stress is inevitable. Rather than wait for it to hit us, we should think and plan ahead.
The idea is not waste time worrying about the stressful days ahead but to make plans to reduce it, deal with it or recharge after the stressful situation has passed.
The point is that in order to be proactive in managing stress, we need to take action both before and after it occurs. Anticipating stressful situations and planning accordingly is a good way to remove the element of surprise that allows stress to take hold and accumulate.
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Set Vacation Days & Downtimes
When we make our wellbeing a priority, we’ll understand that holidays are not really a luxury. We need holidays. We need some time away from home and work-related stress.
We owe it to ourselves to plan and keep to set vacation days. Though a change of location would certainly help take our minds of work, we need not travel to an exotic location to give ourselves a break. Changing up our routine could be all that we need. Instead of an expensive vacation, you can plan an elaborate staycation!
I don’t know about you but I can build a kickass Staycation around 3 things: Plenty of food, drinks and sleep. Throw in a few good movies and novels, and I’m mentally in the Bahamas
Don’t wait to tick-off all the signs of stress on your watchlist. As you set goals and productivity targets, schedule vacation weeks and days off.
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Enjoy the Little Things & Celebrate Small Victories.
I love quotes. Some of my favourite ones talk about how great accomplishments result from smaller, more negligible ones. They may sound very common. They’re also very true.
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
VINCENT VAN GOGH
“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.”
CHINESE PROVERB
“The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance — and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.”
OPRAH WINFREY
Many of us however, only make time for ‘big deals’. Celebrating small victories & accomplishments can go a long way in helping us reduce stress and refocus our mental energies on the work ahead. We need to get in the habit of recognizing the ‘small deals’ and their potentially big significance.
This is one habit we need to apply beyond our own lives. We need to celebrate each other’s smaller accomplishments too. As we do, we build a culture that has less toxic competition and more appreciation for each other. It’s easier to be inspired by what someone else has accomplished when we can see ourselves doing something similar too. Appreciating the little things is a habit that can really help us enjoy more and stress less about life and work in general.
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Practice Self-Love & Self-Care.
Last but certainly not least, self-love and self-care are essential components of stress management. I like to think of self-love as dealing fairly and kindly with oneself everyday. It means making sure we afford ourselves a healthy dose of wants and needs. It also means making tough choices in favour of our health and wellbeing.
We each have our self-love fails. I can be really hard on myself when I make mistakes or when I miss targets. And sometimes, I set my mind on getting one thing done at the expense of everything else. Better self-love for me will mean doing a lot less self-criticism and more self-encouragement.
Things like personal hygiene, nutrition and rest are basics of self-care. Let’s not slack on these responsibilities to ourselves because we have businesses to run and targets to reach. Poor self-love and self-care can only make stress worse.
POSTSCRIPT
Let’s be real. There are stressful days ahead for us here in Nigeria. We are in a recession, inflation is at a 20 year high and people don’t have as much disposable income as they did a few years ago. For businesses, this will mean missed sales targets, lower profits, slower or stalled growth and who knows what else.
It’s true that we need to work hard to make great products, promote them and make sure our customers are satisfied. It’s also true that as entrepreneurs, we need to put stress management plans in place for ourselves and the good people who work with and for us.
Beyond production, marketing, sales and networking, good stress management could be the thing that keeps us performing at our best throughout 2017. Goodluck!
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