10 Top Tips For Reducing Stress In Your Life #1

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Clik here to view.If you want to enhance your sleep and kiss goodnight to those stressful thoughts that are plaguing you at night, then it’s time for you to start managing your stress.

In the next three posts, I share my top ten tips for managing stress so that your worries lose their power to stop you sleeping at night.

Picture the scene, you are lying in bed. You have done your sacred bedtime ritual – tick! Your room has been checked and is now providing optimal sleeping conditions – tick! But you are still lying in bed, tying yourself in psycho-knots, going over all the thoughts that are giving you stress.

And it’s not just the events of the day, is it! You are stressing about the past. Your crazy-busy mind is getting to grips with some pretty nasty future scenarios. You are writing To-Do lists in your mind that will take years to complete and that’s just the stuff that you need to do tomorrow! Be warned – this way madness (and insomnia) lies…..

So how can you take the necessary steps to finally start managing your stress and say ‘tata’ to night-time worries once and for all?

Here are my tips for reducing and managing your stress levels:

IDENTIFY THE CAUSE

Begin by really drilling down into the cause of your stress. If all your worries centre around money, then understanding why you are concerned about finances is a great start. Once we understand the root cause of stress it is much easier to take practical steps to reduce that fear.

Stress is a response to responsibilities and pressures. We all need a little bit of stress in our lives to keep us engaged and responsive. But if your stress levels are tipping over into di-stress then your body is likely to see the signs and go into default alert mode.

When we are feeling too stressed, we have a tendency to feel inadequate or unable to cope. And remember that stress is all a matter of perception.

If you are stressing about a particular issue, then ask yourself these simple questions:

Have I dealt with this issue successfully in the past?
Will this matter still be important in five years time?
What tools/ support can I use to tackle this issue?
What can I do on a practical level to deal with this?

Sometimes just asking these questions can put things back into proportion.

And if you don’t know the answer then just ask the question and allow your subconscious to find a solution. But, you know, to find a solution, our subconscious really needs us to get out of our own way. So ask the questions and then trust that the solution will present itself.

STAY PRESENT

By connecting deeply with our body, we find ourselves in the very present moment. Our bodies are never anywhere else (unless you have discovered time travel in which case – go, you!)

Connecting with your body takes us out of our minds for a while and shows us that right here and now, we are okay.

Make the decision to rest in your body for a while and feel the truth that right now, all is well. The future is clear. Instead, focus on helping your body to experience calm.

By staying present and being mindful, we give ourselves the space to take more intentional actions and heighten our experience of where we are right now.

If you are lying in your warm bed with a roof over your head then right now, YOU ARE SAFE. So you can put aside your worries for tomorrow when your subconscious will have found some different solutions.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

We can reduce our stress response by actively choosing to focus on positive things from our day. Gratitude does not have to be recorded for it to be effective. Let go of the chore of writing a gratitude diary and instead just welcome in the idea that it is the grateful thoughts that produce the positive reaction.

When you are lying in bed and your mind is gripped in worst case scenario mode, remind yourself to spend five minutes right now finding five things that you can be thankful for from your day.

These don’t have to be major things. In fact sometimes the most powerful blessings are hidden in the smallest details. A juicy apple at lunchtime. Watching the sparrows finding food. The bubbles on your hands when you did the washing up. That first coffee of the day.

Little things make a big difference.

Make your mind find the treasure from your day. Just thinking these grateful thoughts and being thankful for them is enough to restore a sense of calm.

JOURNAL AT THE END OF THE DAY

I know, I know, I am always going on about journaling but I really do believe that it can be such a powerful tool in reducing stress and getting a clear handle on our thoughts.

So many people get caught up in the idea that there is a right way to journal (there isn’t!) or that their journal should look a certain way (it needn’t!).

Your journal is simply a space for you to get your thoughts out of your mind and onto a page. It can be a neat list of bullet points or a scrambled mess of stream of consciousness.

The key is to get the thoughts out of your head. Expressing these feelings is enough to allow a sense of calm to return to your mind. Holding onto our thoughts uses a whole heap of energy and if your mind is going ten to the dozen then your body will respond by releasing more and more energy as it tries to keep up.

Think of your journal as a brain dump. No need to find elegant solutions or even write in sentences. Who cares about your spelling and punctuation. Just get it out so it’s no long ‘in’.

You may be pleasantly surprised at the solutions that come from the process. Often the act of writing our thoughts leads our conscious mind to analyse and find responses to the issues that are presenting. You may even find that a lovely calm inner voice finds its way onto your pages and shows you that things aren’t so bad. And even if things are awful right now, you WILL find a way through this. You always have and you always will.

REACH OUT TO OTHERS

This can be a tough one when you are feeling stressed, especially if the cause of your stress is within your family. It’s so easy to feel isolated and disconnected.

But the truth is that we are all connected. There is always help available and you can muster up the courage to reach out for it in your time of need.

If you are feeling friendless or don’t want to burden your loved ones, then get help from a professional. I tell all my clients that reaching out for my help is a real act of courage. It shows that they recognise that they don’t need to go it alone.

There is always someone who can help. It might be a budget advisor to help you with your debt. Or a minister to provide some spiritual guidance. There are doctors, and counsellors (and hypnotherapists – give me a call – I can help!)

In this highly populated world, there is one truth – you are never alone.

Reach out, make the connection, have the courage to share your vulnerability with others and allow them to support you for a while.

So that’s the first five tips for dealing with stress. I will cover the next five in the next post so hop on the email list to be notified when I post that ( hint hint it will be in two days!)

If you are wanting help with making some changes in your life then a great start can be getting familiar with your vision and values. I have put all my worksheets into the little Workbook of Change which is absolument gratuit (that’s FREE) just by popping your deets into this form. It’s got some really powerful exercises in there and has proved really beneficial for my clients so do sign up for your free copy. The link is HERE.

And remember that this article is just part of the series on finally restoring your deep sleep patterns to normal and saying goodnight to the Imsomnia Monster.

I know from personal experience how important a good night’s sleep is and that is why I am so passionate about the new product that I am in the process of creating for you. I will be launching it very soon so stay tooned for updates and email subscribers will be getting a juicy discount token too so there’s another good reason right there to sign up to the list.

See you in the next post when I will be sharing the next five top tips for Reducing Stress in your Life.

Have a gorgeous day,

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