It’s an unfortunate reality that stress in a common factor in many of our lives. Whether it’s work, finances, or chores at home, stress can have a negative effect on both mental and physical health. Therefore, it’s important to know some effective methods that can help to reduce stress in daily life.
The Health Impacts of Stress
It’s normal to feel stress occasionally, and our bodies tend to recover quite easily from short-term stress. However, constant stress prevents the body from returning to a relaxed state, resulting in chronic stress. Sometimes, your body can continue to experience symptoms of stress even if you don’t feel consciously stressed.
When experiencing chronic stress, you are likely to suffer from poor sleep, muscle tension, and more frequent headaches. You may find that your blood pressure gets higher, which can affect your heart health, leading to further health complications.
Stress can also lead to changes in mood and mental health. For example, you may feel irritable, anxious, or depressed. This can, in turn, lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as overeating, smoking, or drinking.
Therefore, to avoid these negative effects of stress, it helps to know how to reduce stress in daily life.
How to Reduce Stress in Daily Life
Stress management is important for your wellbeing. It helps you avoid the health impacts of stress and boosts your overall mood. However, sometimes reducing stress may seem to be easier said than done. These techniques can help you reduce stress in daily life.
Identify the Causes
One of the first steps towards reducing stress is to work out what is causing it. By knowing what is triggering your body’s stress response, you can start to work towards preventing additional stress. In fact, sometimes not knowing why you are stressed can become a cause of further stress. Therefore, identifying the trigger could kill two birds with one stone. Moreover, once you know the causes of your stress, it can be easier to choose the right solutions.
Stay Active
Whilst not necessarily a solution to your stress, regular exercise remains an effective way to reduce stress in daily life. Partly, this is because exercising triggers the body to release endorphins, which are a natural painkiller. One of the ways endorphins help is by making it easier to fall asleep, which can support your body to reduce stress levels.
Exercise is also an effective distraction, as you focus on your activity rather than stressful thoughts. This can help you to clear your head, which can also calm your mind and make it easier to process your feelings. As a result, it may then be easier to identify a longer-term solution to your stress.
Have a Chat
Sometimes, talking about your stress is the best way to reduce it. As well as potentially helping you identify the causes of your stress, talking things through can be a stress reliever itself. Face-to-face interactions have been shown to release the hormones oxytocin and dopamine, which improve mood and reduce stress.
Moreover, discussing your stress with friends or family can help you identify solutions. Sometimes, these solutions may be provided by your loved ones. Alternatively, talking about your stress could help you determine a solution yourself. In fact, it has been well documented how talking about problems makes it easier to process them.
Focus on a Hobby
An effective way to reduce stress in daily life is to distract yourself with an activity you enjoy. It’s important to find time away from your responsibilities. Exercise and conversation may come into this, but there’s no harm in a quiet activity alone.
Consider taking up an old hobby or even diving into something new. Ideal hobbies for reducing stress include gardening, arts & crafts, reading, and baking. However, there are a wide range of activities you can try, so it’s important to choose something that appeals to you. You may even find that you prefer something slightly more challenging, such as learning a new language.
Prioritise
If you are experiencing stress because there’s a lot on your plate, take the time to plan how you will address them. One of the most important things to recognise is that it’s often impossible to deal with everything at once, and that’s okay. Identify the most important tasks and address these first.
By spending time thinking about any tasks that are causing stress, you are also taking control. Sometimes, simply having a plan in mind can help to reduce stress in daily life. Don’t be disheartened if you don’t have time to address everything – focus on the things you can control.
Meditation
Whilst it doesn’t work for everyone, meditation can be an effective way to reduce stress. There are also several ways to approach this activity. You can try seated meditation, where you clear your mind and focus on your breathing. Alternatively, you can sit in nature or engage in an activity, focusing on being present in the moment – this is known as mindfulness.
Many people find that the best form of meditation is to get lost in a simple but enjoyable activity. They simply enter “the zone” and stop thinking about anything else. This could be any of the hobbies we listed earlier, or something else.
Tip: Avoid Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Whilst not necessarily effective for reducing stress, it’s important that you focus on positive coping mechanisms, such as those outlined above. When we are stressed, many people choose to turn to habits such as overeating, smoking, or drinking to excess. These actions can further affect your health, beyond the impacts of stress alone. Moreover, some of these habits are difficult to drop once started, which can lead to further health complications.
It is also worth noting than these coping mechanisms will not do anything to address the causes of stress. In fact, they may simply become another trigger as you try to kick the habit.
Our Mission
At Telecare Choice, our mission is to reduce the stress of living alone or with health conditions by providing a 24/7 personal alarm service. Our alarms help elderly, disabled, and vulnerable people remain safe and secure at home and on the go.
When the alarm is activated, our Monitoring Team answer your call through the loudspeaker, speaking to you to find out what support is needed. They then inform your emergency contacts and, if necessary, the emergency services.
You can find out more about Telecare Choice alarms by reading our quick guide. Order your Telecare Choice personal alarm online today, or call our friendly team on 0800 635 7000.
