Posts Tagged reduce stress

Use Education to Reduce Stress

On August 9, 2018 / Stress Management

Image of three silhouettes, each problem solving in a different way

If you want to reduce stress, remember Albert Einstein’s quote: “Education is what you have left over after you have forgotten everything you have learned in school.” What does this quote have to do with reducing stress? Well, when you focus on true education, rather than fact memorization, you can reduce stress.

Realize that learning is not simply the acquisition of facts. This is a powerful insight to always remember.

Education, or learning, is always renewable because learning should never end until life ends. You always have the option of looking at any new learning as a positive experience. You also have the choice to engage in the activity (remembering that with the risk comes the reward), and to reflect … >>>

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How to Reduce Anxiety

On April 19, 2018 / Stress Management

Image of a cartoon man running from an over-sized and ominous shadow figure chasing him.

When you eliminate your assumptions, you greatly reduce anxiety. Although assumptions are necessary, they are often the cause of needless stress and anxiety. When you understand how assumptions influence your feelings, you will enter a new stage of stress management.

For example, let’s say that you learn that you will have a meeting with your supervisor later in the day. You can assume the meeting will be discouraging, or you can assume it will be encouraging. If you assume you will be discouraged after the meeting, and you are not, you will have fretted for nothing. With the opposite assumption, if you believe the meeting will bring you good news and it does not, you will be disappointed. No matter … >>>

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How to Relax During Stressful Situations

On January 4, 2018 / Effectiveness, Stress Management

Image of a brain wearing sunglasses sitting in a beach chair on a beach relaxing

Trying to relax during a stressful situation can be a challenge. After all, it’s hard to relax when your mind is racing and when events are stressing you out. If you find taking a break to relax difficult when the pressure is on, consider the following approach.

During the last days of World War II, someone commented to President Harry Truman that he appeared to bear up under the stress and strain of the presidency better than any previous president, that the job did not appear to have aged him or sap his vitality, and that this was remarkable—especially in view of the many problems which he faced as a wartime president.

His response was, “I have a foxhole in … >>>

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Your Mindset and Stress

On December 14, 2017 / Blog, Stress Management

If you feel that your life is stressful, you may need to alter your mindset.

The fact is that we all perceive life through filters developed from our temperament and experiences. Your mental set functions all the time, consciously or nonconsciously. Having a limited mental set hampers solutions to challenges, thus causing increased stress.

Therefore, a critical key to problem solving and stress reduction is expanding your mindset by cultivating an open questioning approach. Questions that engage your thoughts influence the quality of your life. By cultivating an open questioning state of mind, you broaden your universe and improve your ability to travel through it.

It’s easy to talk about having an open mind, but frequently mindsets are constrained by … >>>

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Take a Break from Your Stress

On October 26, 2017 / Blog, Stress Management

We can all benefit from taking an occasional break from our daily stress. Think about how much stress you are carrying around every day. While stress is inevitable in today’s world, how much you carry with you, and for how long, can have significant negative effects on your health.

I once heard the following analogy, which really put this topic in perspective.

A young lady confidently walked around the room while leading and explaining stress management to an audience with a raised glass of water. Everyone knew she was going to ask the ultimate question: “Half empty or half full?”

She fooled them all. “How heavy is this glass of water?” she inquired with a smile. Answers ranged from 8 … >>>

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Let Go to Reduce Stress

On January 26, 2017 / Blog, Stress Management

Sometimes you need to let go of old thinking to reduce your stress levels. Unfortunately, most people have a hard time letting go of outdated thinking and old techniques.

Consider the following story. An expedition of scientists went on a mission to capture a Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. Only an estimated 100-200 of this particular species exists, and they reside only in the jungles of Vietnam. The objective was to capture one of the monkeys alive and unharmed.

Using their knowledge of monkeys, the scientists devised a trap consisting of a small bottle with a long narrow neck. A handful of nuts was placed in it, and the bottle was staked out and secured by thin wires attached to a tree. … >>>

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Put in Effort to Reduce Stress and Anxiety

On December 27, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Weekly Tips

Stressed student playing with a smart phone instead of addressing anxiety through effort

Stress and anxiety can affect people of all ages—whether you are near retirement or a stressed student. The key to reduce stress and anxiety is through the self-satisfaction of effort.

As the story about stress and age goes, there was a dentist in Duluth, Minnesota who had more patients at age 89 than he ever had in his previous years of practice.

His hands were steady, and his peers considered him very competent. Whenever anyone asked him about the possibility of retirement and giving up the stress, he’d say with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll quit when they carry me up the hill, feet first.” Apparently, anxiety and stress were not a concern to him.

Contrast this with a … >>>

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The Importance of Friendship

On December 6, 2016 / Blog, Stress Management

The importance of friendship cannot be overstated. Having strong relationships with others (aka: friends) is vital to maintaining good health. In fact, according to health researchers, friends are good for your health because they:

Increase your sense of belonging and purpose
Boost your happiness and reduce your stress
Improve your self-confidence and self-worth
Help you cope with traumas, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss or the death of a loved one
Encourage you to change or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking or lack of exercise

As if those findings aren’t enough to highlight the importance of friendships, research further finds that adults who develop strong friendships have a lower risk of health problems, including depression, high … >>>

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Disagreement and Stress

On June 30, 2016 / Stress Management

Disagreement between people causes stress—there’s no doubt about it. Sometimes the disagreement elevates to the point of verbal fighting. Once that occurs, the stress levels of both parties will be high, and agreement will be elusive.

Fortunately, you always have a choice in how you handle a situation. Rather than let a disagreement escalate, you can reduce stress by doing the following:

Say to the other person, “I don’t want to win; I just want to understand what you are saying. My objective is to CLARIFY, NOT INFLUENCE. You’re saying that you believe A B and C. I believe A B and D. So we really agree more than we differ.”

At the worst you have clarified. At the best … >>>

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Take Control to Reduce Stress

On June 21, 2016 / Reduce Stress, Weekly Tips

One of the best ways to reduce stress is to gain control of various areas of your life. Of course, you can’t control everything, but there are probably many things you can take control of, rather than letting others dictate what you must do. Why is control so important to being able to reduce stress?

In a classic study, scientists put two rats in a cage, each of them locked in a running wheel. The first rat could exercise whenever he liked. The second was yoked to the first and forced to run when his counterpart did.

Exercise usually does reduce stress and encourage neuron growth, and indeed, the first rat’s brain bloomed with new cells. The second rat, however, … >>>

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Thoughts Affect Discipline

On September 15, 2015 / Discipline

An understanding of mind-body connection is essential for reducing stress and influencing others. Thoughts have direct and powerful connections to all sorts of physiological functions. Think hard enough about jumping out of an airplane, and your heart will start to race and your palms to sweat.

Perhaps the most dramatic and best-known case was described by Norman Cousins in his “Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient.” While I was recently re-organizing my library, I came across his description of his experience in the May 28, 1977 issue of The Saturday Review (pp. 4-6, 48-51).

Cousins came down with a serious collagen illness, a disease of the body’s connective tissues. One result of the disease is the reduction … >>>

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Choices and Stress

On October 23, 2013 / Effectiveness, Parenting

Offering choices significantly reduces stress and is remarkably more effective than attempting to force change. If a parent coerces or forces a decision upon a child that the youngster does not like—and if the child does not respond as the parent desires—the youngster is making a choice. Call it defiance, but nevertheless a choice has been made. Conversely, if the youngster does comply, a choice also has been made. So, since the child has choices anyway, providing options diminishes stress and is more effective than not offering them.

The most effective number of choices to offer is three. With some young people, offering just two choices seems limiting and restrictive. Giving three options eliminates all perceptions of coercion and encourages … >>>

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Benefits of the Raise Responsibility System

On July 30, 2013 / Effectiveness, Learning

Practitioners of the Raise Responsibility System move into a stress reducing mode, and young people become more responsible because:

The youngster self-evaluates
The youngster acknowledges inappropriate behavior
The youngster takes ownership
The youngster develops a plan
The youngster develops a procedure to implement the plan

The system is so effective because:

Positivity is a more constructive teacher than negativity.
Choice empowers.
Self-evaluation is essential for lasting improvement.
People choose their own behaviors.
Self-correction is the most effective approach for changing behavior.
Acting responsibly is the most satisfying of rewards.
Growth is greater when authority is used without punishment.

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Use Creative Solutions

On October 8, 2012 / Effectiveness, Relationships

The more frequently we remember to take a positive approach, the greater the chances of reducing stress, building trust, avoiding conflicts, and increasing satisfaction and contentment. Creative thinking, however, may be called for in order to achieve these benefits.

This was the case with the two boys and the husband who invariably left their soiled clothes on the floor rather than putting them in the hamper. The sight of the dropped clothes so bothered the wife and mother that she indiscriminately scolded all members of the family. She then asked herself, “How can I turn this into a positive situation for me, as well as for them?” She came up with an idea.

She told her family that whenever she … >>>

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