The
most important thing that you must accept is that stress
is a state of mind and is very personal. Some people are very calm in
situations that other people find extremely stressful.
The only difference is how they interpret their
experience.
You can
turn any situation that is currently stressful into one
in which you feel comfortable and at ease. It's just a
matter of how you look at it.
A
number of techniques are given here to help you to
reinterpret situations in an non stressful way.
Some of
these techniques will be new to you, other will seem
extremely obvious. However, it is easy to forget about
the obvious. If you treat this 19 step program as a
check list and run down it on a daily basis, it will
help you to focus on what is important and effective
19
Ways To Eliminate Stress
1. Prepare For Stressful Events
2. Ultradian Rhythms
3. Creativity
4. Exercise
5. Aromatherapy
6. Massage
7. Breathing
8. Relaxation
9. Nutrition
10. Humor
11. Touch
12. Love And Affection
13. Control
14. Anchoring
15. Brain Wave Training
16. Internal Voice
17. Environment
18. Good Sleep Pattern
19. Stress Hypnosis (CD Offer)
1. Prepare For Stressful Events
Write down all of the events in your life that you feel are
stressful. Take your time and include even the seemingly trivial
ones.
Write down how the stress shows itself for each
of these events. If you're not sure exactly how stress affects
you then refer to the section on stress symptoms below.
There are two important ideas that you have to
understand. If you combine them then you will have the power to
eliminate any stressful situation.
1. You create the stress within yourself because a
situation is unfamiliar or threatening and you are afraid of
the outcome
2. What you create in your mind, your mind perceives as
real.
Using these two basic ideas produces a 3 step
technique to eliminate potential stressful situations:
1. Acceptance If you are prepared to accept,
truly accept, any outcome and immediately move on, then the
fear will no longer have any power over you. The best way to
do this is to imagine the worst possible outcome and make an
agreement with yourself to accept it and live with it if it
happens.
Plan for this eventuality. It is not
pessimism, it is good planning. It puts you at the back of
the queue from where you can only move forward,
optimistically. Once you've done this, any outcome is an
improvement to be welcomed.
2. Familiarity If you make yourself familiar with
a situation, learn it inside out, then it's influence over
you vanishes. You become desensitized. Most people are
nervous the first time they drive a car, but a year later
they are driving automatically without a second thought,
leaving it all to their subconscious.
So, what is the best way to familiarise
yourself with a situation without actually doing it?
3. Mental Rehearsal with Visualisations Most
people need to get things right first time and don't have
the luxury of being able to practice it over and over again
so that it does become familiar. So, you practice it over
and over in your mind. Mentally rehearse the situation.
There is buckets of research now to show that workouts and
physical exercises imagined in the mind actually produce
real muscle growth.
The best way to do this is to make a
scripted film. Run it from start to finish as if it was
actually happening. Make it as vivid as possible. Make it
bright and loud and close up. Don't let your thoughts wander
and reduce to directionless worrying. Try and get into the
feelings and sounds and people involved. Repeat this as
often as you can.
2. Ultradian Rhythms
Day and night your body runs on a time cycle that lasts about 90
minutes. Known as the ultradian rhythm, during the night this
controls how deeply you sleep. During the day you will find that
every 90 minutes or so (it can vary 75-120 minutes) you feel a
little less energetic, perhaps a little sleepy. See the pages on
Sleep and Insomnia for a more detailed account of ultradian
rhythms.
Some people recommend taking power naps at these
times during the day, but most people don't have the luxury of
being able to do this. However, you should be aware of it and
allow yourself to relax a little and be a little less
productive, in preparation of a more energetic and productive
hour ahead of you.
3. Creativity
Do something creative - self expression is a great stress
reliever.
4. Exercise
This helps to reduce a lot of physical stress. Use those muscles
the way they were intended.
5. Aromatherapy - Relaxation Formulas
Certain essential oils have profound relaxation effects. They
can be used as vapour or as part of a massage program where they
are absorbed directly through the skin.
Good essential oils for removing stress are;
Bergamot (10)
Camomile (1)
Clary Sage (4)
Jasmine (1-2)
Lavender (7)
Marjoram (3)
Neroli (2)
Rose (1)
Rosewood (6)
Vetivert (1)
The figure in brackets is the blend factor. This is the ratio of
each if you want to combine them. You probably wouldn't want to
combine more than three oils at the same time. Once you have
mixed the essential oils in the right proportions you then add
about 5 (a maximum of 7) drops to 30ml of a base oil such as
grapeseed oil. Grapeseed oil is best as it is a good carrier and
it is highly unlikely that anyone is allergic to it.
It is best to consult a professional as certain oils should not
be used on some people, especially if they are pregnant, suffer
epilepsy, chronic illness or skin sensitivities.
6. Massage
Any massage is good. Try to get a deep lymphatic drainage
massage every now and then to help remove toxins from your
system. Indian head massages are great for relieving stress.
7. Breathing
Any deep breathing exercise is beneficial but see the page on
diaphragmatic breathing for a recommended method.
8. Relaxation Techniques
Use the technique on the
self hypnosis page. This is an excellent way to relax both
your body and your mind.
9. Nutrition
This is especially important for blood sugar levels. If they are
swinging up and down because of high sugar intake your mood will
be too. It is in one of the low blood sugar level slumps that
you are going to be very vulnerable to stress. NO sugar, cakes,
sweets, biscuits, deserts. These are all stress inducing
discomfort foods.
10. Humour
This is a very personal thing but whatever your fix, get a daily
dose. Plan it. Add it to your diary or daily schedule. It
stimulates all sorts of useful neurochemicals in your brain that
make you feel happier and less stressed. Tell jokes, watch funny
films or stand up comics, whatever suits you. laughter is very,
very useful.
One note of caution. If you can, do not combine
this with drinking. It is easy to link fun to drink, but, your
body is quite stressed removing alcohol from your system. The
mind and body are strongly linked. Do not fall prey to the old
myth that a good stiff drink is relaxing.
11. Touch
Human contact is essential. Some misguided (in retrospect)
experiments with orphaned babies many years ago had them brought
up without any physical contact or affection from another human.
The experiment had to be abruptly stopped, but too late to
prevent several of them from shrivelling up and dying from grief
and neglect. Western society does very little touching compared
with other societies in the world and it appears to be reducing
more and more.
12. Love and Affection
Lots of good de-stressing substances like seratonin available
for free here. It appears that giving to a responsive receiver
is better for you than just receiving.
13. Control
Know what you have control over in your life and what you do not
have control over. If you have control use it. If you do not,
then you have to accept this fact and plan accordingly. There is
no point wasting energy trying to control something that you
cannot. We all have to hand over the control for some things in
our lives.
If you're having problems releasing control and
are constantly fighting it, then you need to realise that you
are already constantly handing over control to someone very
important. Your subconscious mind. When you go to sleep at night
your subconscious controls your breathing, your heart rate, it
is listening for any signs of danger though you are not
consciously aware of it.
The best place for control is your subconscious
because it manages things flawlessly. You need to get your
conscious interfering mind out of the way. Hypnosis is the
easiest way to do it. Conscious acceptance comes a close second
place, or you can do it the hard way and battle it until you
have to give in, with all the resulting damage to your
self-esteem. Do not go into the realm of low self-esteem control
addict.
14. Anchoring
Create a relaxing and calm anchor that you can use at stressful
moments. See the page on
Anchoring for a full explanation how to do this. It
shouldn't take you more than 10 or 15 minutes, though you may
need to revisit it and build it up every now and then.
15. Brain Wave Training
A lot of studies into brain wave activity have identified that
under stress we tend to exhibit sustained levels of beta brain
wave activity. Refer to the page on
brain waves for a full explanation and some useful free
software if you feel inspired to try it out.
16. Internal Voice
We all have internal voices that reflect our thoughts. If your
internal voice sounds depressive or stressed then you can change
it to a happy optimistic one. If you find it difficult, choose
someone you know or a film character that has a positive effect
on you when you hear their voice. Substitute their voice for
your old internal voice. This can be quite an uplifting
experience.
17. Environment
Make your work or home environment more pleasant. Change
something. This gets you to focus on something outside of
yourself over which you have control and can perfect to your own
taste. Very therapeutic.
18. Establish a Good Sleep Pattern
See the pages on
Sleep and Insomnia. . Lack of quality sleep can be very
stressful.
19. Stress Hypnosis
CD # 1 - Relaxation- Stress Hypnosis
Sit back, relax and discover how easily you can drift into a deep hypnotic trance. 40 minutes of this deep relaxation is the equivalent of several hours sleep.
The combination of simple harmonic music, human heart beats, binaural tone technology and the guidance of a trained hypnotic voice will deeply relax anyone and you will find that you awake thoroughly refreshed. You can also choose to do a shorter 20 minute relaxation which works like a very effective power nap.
Virtual Hypnotist is a free, open source, interactive hypnosis program
It includes features such as voice recognition, speech synthesis, subliminal messages, completely customizable scripts (featuring a unique scripting language), videos, audio, and lots more. Its purpose is to simulate a real hypnosis session as much as possible.
