HOW TO CREATE A STRATEGIC PLAN FOR STRESS RELIEF. (Meditation and breathing won’t stick without this foundation)

You might look like a wellness ninja and eat only organic homemade food and have a daily balanced workout. But if you feel stressed on a daily basis or quite often, you might be in a similar danger than those living on processed food in front of a screen.

You might have heard of stress being a killer and that´s right - it messes up all the systems in the body, leads to nasty autoimmune diseases, weakens the immune system and creates a constant state of inflammation.

But here´s the thing… it´s not enough to tell you to stress less…. because honestly, how is it even possible not being stressed in the current world? 🤷🏼‍♀️

According to a research published in May this year in American Psychologist, people of all ages have more daily stressors than they did in the 1990s.

"On average, people reported about 2% more stressors in the 2010s compared to people in the past," said David M. Almeida, Ph.D., a professor of human development and family studies at Penn State, "what really surprised us is that people at midlife reported a lot more stressors, about 19% more stress in 2010 than in 1990."

According to Almeida, that increase in stress translates to around 64 days of stress per year for people between ages 45 and 64. 🤦🏼‍♀️

The study began with collecting data from 1,499 adults in 1995 and comparing it to data collected from 782 different adults in 2012. I don´t even dare to imagine these numbers during 2020 and global pandemic. While in the past years the common stress sources were primarily coming from workplaces and relationships, I feel like now it´s coming from everywhere - media, authorities, restrictions, lack of common sense, people divided in many tribes fighting against each other…

So, is it even possible to reduce our stress levels?

I believe that we need to keep trying every day.

But we also need an effective set of tools that are much more sophisticated than just “take a bath, take a day off for self care rituals or meditate“ kind of stuff, even if they are still good ideas.

I believe in good strategies that can fix the root of a problem instead of avoiding the problem and escaping to a bubble bath.

We need to set up a foundation for those tools such as meditation or breath work, because without it, it won´t stick.

Stress relief is a process of individual investigation followed by actionable steps taken on a daily basis.

1️⃣  MINDFULNESS.

This is the first step you need to start with.

Every improvement of health and wellbeing starts with MINDFULNESS, which basically means paying attention.

Without paying attention to how you really feel in all aspects of you life, you won´t be able to change anything.

We spend most of our days trapped in our heads with the mind dreaming and projecting, we are disconnected from what is really going on. 

Here is an example: My mind might be telling me I need to lose some weight to feel better and lighter, but in fact if I just sit for 3min with my eyes closed feeling and observing my body, I might find out that I feel heavy because my hips and hamstring are tight, pulling my low back and therefore changing my postural template. So then if I just stretch out my hips and sides to open up my rib cage and expand my breath, the whole posture becomes lighter and will feel good again. Eventually this will eliminate my stress about including more exercise and changing my eating habits.

The lesson learnt here? Stop listening with your eyes and ears and start to feel more your own body.

With MINDFULNESS, you will develop an important observation skill.

The observer in this game is YOU with your eyes closed, but observing through the feelings and vibrations.

So doesn´t matter the outfit, makeup, hair, body weight, marketing, filters or number of followers… what you feel is real and it is constantly telling you important stuff. All it takes is to set up a timer for 3 min, close your eyes and observe every part of your body and be curious about what´s going on. Then open your eyes, grab a journal and write it down…

2️⃣  JOURNALING.

This is a very powerful tool when it comes to healthy habits creation, but also as a stress management tool. 

I don´t know about you, but one of my frequent stressors is the feeling that my head would explode from all that stuff going on… ideas, reminders, memories, projections.

And one of the things that work really well is to do a brain dump - pulling all those ideas out on a paper or in a Google doc and then organize them. Sometimes it is the emotions behind an inner talk that don´t give us a break. In this case, grabbing a journal and writing down anything that comes out is really liberating.

Eventually you will gain a lot of clarity by just seeing those thoughts on a paper in front of you and it might bring you to the next stress management step…

3️⃣  BOUNDARIES. 

Now, we are getting to some serious stress management tools. 

Because let´s be honest.. or you design your life you are craving and take steps to create it, or you live to respond to other people's requests and needs, so you live to create their visions of their lives.

As you probably know at this point, being mindful is the key. Setting some boundaries is essential.

So when you wake up and the first thing you do is check your emails, the probability that you start your day with someone else´s agenda is very high.

Your mind goes immediately into a place where you start to think about the solution and what you will answer, eventually the cortisol level climbs up and you start another stressful day.

Look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't do your work, but there is time for that.

When we time traveled 30 years back, people were doing their work at work. As no mobile phones with access to emails and social media were available, nobody was even thinking of answering work requests at 6am or 11pm.

And believe me, the world won't end if you take some offline time for yourself. It only can make you feel happier and be around in this world longer..

Setting up healthy boundaries is not an easy task sometimes. 

We want to be nice and we were educated that saying YES is nice. 

It is hard to say NO and therefore we sometimes blame others asking for things we don´t feel comfortable with, instead of saying NO without feeling guilty in the first place.

It´s time to start saying NO and move on to the next stress management pillar.💪🏼

4️⃣  TIME BUFFERS.

I don´t know where this is coming from, but we have this tendency to idealize time. 

When planning to do something or get somewhere we always think of the time it takes under ideal circumstances. 

Example.

Trying to fit micro management tasks into a busy day such as write an authorization and print it out. We think that this will just take a minute. It might, but most of the time, something goes wrong along the way - the computer suddenly starts to update some software, a password to enter an app was lost and we don´t remember it, the printer ran out of the ink or paper or just got disconnected from the computer for some reason and has to be reinstalled etc… At this point I´m sure you can recall a similar situation and all the stress it brings when you thought this thing will just take a minute..

Getting to places is another daily example, we never count with traffic jams caused by accidents or weather or no reason at all. Or simply the number of people on Earth is growing and therefore the number of cars on the roads too..

We idealize the time it takes to perform our daily tasks.

Therefore TIME BUFFERS are one of the best STRESS MANAGEMENT tools.

But there is much more benefit in time buffers - they improve intention, focus and performance. I believe I get more done and my work has better quality with time buffers.

And what’s more important is that you will finally have time slots to fit those stress relief tools everyone is talking about - breath work, meditation, reading or whatever it is that gives you a mental break.

5️⃣ STRESS RELIEF TOOLS.

So now that you have a solid foundation, you can actually start to fit them into your day without stressing out. 

I found out that one of the most stressful things are the transitions - between different tasks and activities, places, clients and everything that has different energy.

By scheduling your time buffers you’re giving yourself permission to slow down and reset. 🧘🏼‍♀️

Just close your eyes for a few moments, take a few nice deep breaths or do a brief breath work or meditation and set an intention for your next task or activity.

Think of the best outcome you can possibly get from the next task ahead of you and think about what it takes and how you need to show up. This is a great grounding habit that will shift your inner calm and performance to the next level. 

Because in the end what we all are aiming for is to become the best possible version of ourselves and stress won’t get us there, right? 🤔