Here’s how to manage stress effectively
Life today is pretty stressful. You don’t need me to tell you that. Many of the most serious health complaints people face today – like high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks, anxiety and depression – are oftentimes stress related.
An effective way of dealing with stress is to practice the “4 A’s” of stress management.
These stand for:
- Avoid
- Alter
- Adapt
- Accept
Let’s go through these one at a time.
Avoid unnecessary stress. Sometimes this is simple, sometimes not, but you can often avoid unnecessary stress just by learning to say “no” in certain situations, or avoiding people who stress you out. While it’s not healthy to avoid a stressful situation that needs addressing, you may be surprised by the number of stressful things that you can eliminate from your life.
Alter the situation. When you can’t avoid a stressful situation, try to alter it. This may involve changing the way you communicate and operate in your daily life. This might mean having to compromise when doing something and accepting that you’re not going to get exactly what you want from the situation, or being more assertive and communicating your concerns to (or about) others in an open and respectful way.
Adapt to the stressor. If you can’t change or eliminate the source of stress, then change yourself. By changing your expectations and attitude, you can better adapt to stressful situations and regain your sense of control. If a person is stressing you out, try to avoid them as much as possible.
Accept the things you can’t change. Finally, you just have to accept that many things in life are simply beyond our control. Serious illness, bad weather, a recession or pandemic etc. are things we have to learn to live with – and that’s just the way life is. If your own poor choices have placed you in a stressful situation that you can’t get out of, learn from your mistakes and move on.
PS. There’s still time to grab a copy of my chaos to calm Course. Here’s the link:
