Managing Stress

Stress is a normal and natural part of human life — You can’t avoid it, so how do you manage it?
We encounter stress every day: in driving through traffic, falling behind schedule and managing big projects.
We must learn to how to deal with stress in order to lead a more productive, happy life.
Today I’m going to share a few ways that I manage the stress in my life, and I know these will work for you as well.

Here are 5 ways to deal with stress:

1. Plan Your Day
   Plan every aspect of your day and plan your activities in advance, especially if you are going through a difficult time in your life. Having a plan for your day will make you feel more in control. You won’t have to think about or make a decision on what to do next.!
   Becoming an expert in time management will reduce your stress levels enormously. Breaking down every task and activity in your day or week will make the big picture a lot less intimidating.
2. Focus On Your Most Important Task
   When you are experiencing a lot of stress, only work on the tasks that are the most important to improving your life.
   You can use tools that we’ve discussed in the past, like the 80/20 Rule, to make setting and choosing your goals easier.
   Setting clear priorities for your work each day, before you begin, will relieve much of your stress immediately. Then, discipline yourself to start on your most important task and work on it until it is complete.
3. Get More Rest
   It’s amazing how many people suffer greater stress from the same event because they are just tired. Fatigue causes you to experience stress at much higher levels for much longer periods of time.
   A body well taken care of will serve you much better in the long-run, and will reduce your stress naturally. If you are planning your day properly, then planning for more sleep shouldn’t be a problem.
4. Talk Out Your Situation
   Find someone that you like, trust and respect and talk to them about the situation you are experiencing; ask them for their advice. Sometimes just talking about the issue out loud will help reduce the anxiety and stress you are feeling.
5. Look For The Lesson
   One of the things that you can do to eliminate the stress from your life is to ask yourself:
   “What can I learn from this experience? What is this experience trying to teach me?”
   Ask yourself if you should be doing more of something, or less of something in the future to avoid this sort of stress.
   If you look into any situation and look for the lesson in your most difficult experiences, you will always find one.
   Those are my suggestions for reducing stress in your life, I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me.