This post is for anyone who feels they are holding onto the stress of 2020 or are struggling to feel up to speed in 2021, who could use a quick circuit breaker to manage their stress and feel more themselves.
As our live become “normal” again, with nearly everything being back at full capacity, very few places requiring face masks and your social lives (or at least your family’s social lives) picking up pace, many of our clients have been finding themselves more fatigued, worn out and just generally more stressed than they were back in the before times (aka pre March 2020).
It’s almost as if consciously we WANT to be back to normal, but our bodies haven’t decided to go along with us yet.
There are many possible reasons as to why this is, but the main themes I am hearing is that people are just waiting for the next round of lock downs to hit us at any moment, and the other is that a lot of people actually LOVED the slow down in the pace of their lives.
A lot of us are struggling to return to the glorification of being busy and the constant social demands on our attention and time.
Especially in Melbourne, we spent more of the last year being afraid of too much direct human contact than we did out in society. Now we are headed back to office and not only do we have to retrain our brain to be OK with having people around, but we have to be “on” all day, not just for the Zoom meetings we had!
It really takes a toll on us and has left a lot of our clients drained.
We know you don’t have time to research the best steps you can take to get back to feeling you, if only someone would accumulate years worth of stress related blogs in one easy to locate place and post it on their website amirite??
As always, we’ve got you covered!
May I present, here, for the first time in one place, the best of 6 years of stress specific blogs to get you back on track!
And No, one of the steps won’t be “Get adjusted”. If you’re on this blog you already know how relaxed and good you feel when you’re adjusted. This list is about what YOU can do, from the comfort of your own home to take control.
So without further waffle from me….
8 of our best Stress Busters
Make Stress your friend.
As you know, just saying “don’t let it get to you” is about as useful as a passport in a pandemic, but did you know you possess a huge power over how your body FEELS like it responds to it?
There is no making stress disappear but as I discussed in 2015, there may be a simple way to have lasting impact on what your body physically DOES with the stress and therefore changes how you feel about it.
when you have 15 minutes, watch the video as Kelly McGonigal explains it much better than I can.
The importance of saying ‘NO’.
Not just for little kids to annoy your parents, ‘no’ can be a powerful stress reliever.
You’ll heave heard of FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out?
Well let me introduce JOMO, the Joy Of Missing Out.
If you have ever had a social event coming up and been wishing that it would get cancelled, then you need to connect with JOMO and embrace saying ‘NO’ more often.
Look at your upcoming weekends and recognise, its OK if we don’t do multiple things every day, I won’t say yes to dinner with ‘X’ or breakfast at ‘Y’s house. It’s OK to have enjoyed a few quiet weekends over lock down, to not always be available to everyone. After all, if your friends and family needed down time, you’d understand…and I hate to sound like your mother but if they DON’T understand your need to have some time to yourself then maybe they weren’t very good friends in the first place.
Improve your sleep!
As discussed at length on many occasions on this blog (most recently HERE) getting a good night of sleep is potentially the most important thing you can do for yourself.
For an explanation as to what sleep DOES to us to keep us healthy and reduce sleep, read the blog here about an interview with a sleep expert, but for Martin’s hottest tips on how to GET good sleep, watch the video.
Exercise your demons.
“I really regret that exercise I did and now I feel more stressed out” - Literally no one. Ever
This might seem really obvious but it is worth remembering. Pick an exercise you love to do and give yourself time to do it.
(Foam) Roll your way to relaxation.
Again, this one will seem a little too simple, but as Martin explains in this post, using a foam roller to help get rid of your tight stress shoulders and gert your body breathing again isn’t only easy to do but hugely effective as well!
Screen your screen time.
Think about what you’re doing on your screens and when.
Research shows that if the very first thing you do when you wake up is check your email, subconsciously you’re starting your day on someone ELSE’S agenda, and this increases the stress chemicals in our blood from the beginning of your day, and things cascade from there.
Try getting out of bed, setting a routine, even if its a short one like “I will have a shower and then open my email once I have made breakfast”, that way you open them on YOUR terms.
Also, while thinking about screen time, your devices will all have night modes for their screens, TURN THEM ON. Have them come on as the sun sets and timed to come back to normal as your day starts.
Theres a lot to this but basically, the orange/red of a night mode screen doesn’t wake your brain up the same way the blue/white light of a normal screen does. You’’ll fall asleep faster and better.
Meditate.
This one is obvious and yet feels like it will be impossible to fit into your day and even harder to stick with. There is some good news though, research shows that meditation is like exercise, the more you do it the easier it gets and SOME IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN NONE.
In fact, research shows you can start to get the benefits of meditation even from very short periods of doing it, the song “Someone like you” by Adel or “Strawberry swing” by Coldplay have been shown to start you in the right direction (personally, I’m an Enya man).
Why not try challenging yourself to listening to a song that relaxes you quietly while you take a minute to yourself for a week? Then after you prove you have 3-4 minutes to do that, the jump to a 5 minute guided meditation in an app like ‘smiling mind’ doesn’t seem like such a giant leap!
Try, Try again
Read our 3 simple steps to help keep a healthy change going.
No one expects you to be perfect or to do all 8 of these recommendations at once! Give yourself a break, you deserve to find out which of these tips suit you and only YOU can find out how they fit into your life.
As always, if there is anything we can do to help, any extra info we can provide, then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us!