You would think my stress would be over the moon about now: I moved to a new city seconds before a global pandemic. The field I got my degree in dropped off the face of the earth. I started a new job working 40+ hours a week for the first time. My new city became the center of global racial tension. All signs would say my hair should be falling out about now with stress.
What if I told you that I’ve been less stressed this year than any other year of my life? You could chalk it up to a full year out of a university setting, but I would say it’s been more personal growth. I’ve found learning more about yourself is a much better coping mechanism than a change in circumstances.
Stress has its place in our lives, but many of us have to learn how to use it properly. We can easily let it run our lives until we’re buried in it. Turning to numbing agents (food, alcohol, social media, video games) will only push off dealing with stress rather than actually fix it. Learning how to deal with stress, and kiss it goodbye when you need to, is much harder but much more rewarding.
Before we get much further, let’s dive right into how you can have full control of the stress in your life!
Have A Healthy Work-Life Balance
“Balance” is a simple combination of letters that can often leave us stumbling over their meaning. I’m sure we’ve all heard that we should have a work-life balance (if you’re a student, substitute this for “school-life balance”) but what does that mean? How do you achieve it?
First you have to ask yourself this: what’s my emotional capacity for the work I have now?
Your emotional capacity varies over time, but you can also work on changing it. Some people just naturally have the emotional capacity to put in 60+ hours of work in every week. Some people can be drained after 35. For example, you wouldn’t ask a high schooler to put in a 45 hour work week when they haven’t even learned how to pass geometry. Yet millennial entrepreneurs seem to be super humans that put in double that to get their business off the ground.
If you’re struggling to have a work-life balance, you will want to be careful not go over your emotional capacity to do your job. This doesn’t mean you have to work less hours, because let’s face it, you rarely have that choice available to you. However this may mean you clock in and out exactly when your shift begins and ends. You might have to say no to new projects at work. I’ve even found it helpful to put mental gates up that prevent me from thinking or talking about work when I’m not on the clock.
You may not even have a job that is terribly demanding, but I’d still encourage you to set boundaries when it comes to your work. This will give you practice for when you are (inevitably) thrown into a more stressful season or to deal with stressors if they mainly come from outside work.
Prioritize Sleep
This is something we’ve heard a million times but it may take a million-and-one times hearing it before we listen! Let me tell you, it’s so worth it! When you get quality sleep, your body and brain are optimized to take on the world. Slacking off on sleep makes things inevitably harder, and shockingly is another form of stress on your body.
Sleep isn’t only the way you recharge, it’s the way you recover! Sleep is when your body builds muscle or fights illness. It really is vitally important for healthy and balanced living.
Controling the stress in your life will be an uphill battle if you neglect sleep! Have you ever felt foggy or crabby after a bad night of sleep? Out minds and bodies are less capable of fighting off the negative effects of stress if we aren’t getting quality sleep. Poor sleep effects us even when we don’t feel it (or mask it with caffeine!)
I’ve been making a habit of putting away any devices that emit blue light 1 hr before bet. Let me tell you, it has made a HUGE difference. I pretty much sleep like a rock now, and I need it! I can even get up a full hour earlier in the morning with ease. Every day!
If you want more healthy habits you can implement easily, I highly recommend you check out this post here!
Do More Of What You Love
You might see a lot of self care articles telling you to “go get a mani-pedi” or “soak in a bubble bath” in order to deal with stress. However, these things don’t really do much good unless they are genuinely things you love doing! I find these articles mostly playing on feminine stereotypes to coerce you into spending money…
What is could be more effective for managing stress in your life than doing things you actually love to do?! If you need some endorphins in your life, you already know how to get them! Maybe you actually like a your bubble baths, if so that’s fine. Perhaps you know that your preferred source of endorphins is taking a walk in the woods instead. Maybe it’s shopping at a flea market instead of a department store. Perhaps you like blasting some 90s pop and getting a good workout in. You already know what you love, so do more of that. 😀
Feed Yourself Like A Champion
Similarly how sleep can effect your ability to handle stress, what you choose to fuel your body can be equally important. Stress can frequently serve as an excuse to over-indulge on your favorite comfort foods. (Not demonizing this to be sure, I’m all for enjoying some treats!). However, choosing only to fuel your body with foods lacking proper nutrients will set you up to fall!
When thinking about what you’re putting into your body, think as if you are feeding someone you really loved. If your body wasn’t your own, but you had to make the decisions for her, what would you feed her? You would probably make sure she is fed enough food and that she gets all her nutrients. You’d make sure she eats her veggies because it’s good for her. You wouldn’t make her overeat because you know she doesn’t feel good overeating, but you’d make sure you give her some treats too!
This is especially important if she’s under any stress, whether physical, mental, emotional. Feed that girl well!
Stop Trying To Control Other People
Does it ever seem like all the stress in your life is coming from other people? Maybe you think all your problems would be solved if they simply did this, or stopped saying that, etc. Have you spent energy trying to think of ways you could get other people off your case?
Unfortunately, trying to control other people will always lead to stress. You may be absolutely right in your opinion of other people, but that doesn’t make it right, or even possible for you to control them. The more you embrace that you can’t control people, the easier it will be for stress to leave your life.
This is hard to embrace when it comes to people you feel responsible for. You could drive yourself crazy trying to micromanage your kids, your students, or your friends when you only have their best interest at heart. But try as you might, the only people that can truly change for the better are people who want to change. Don’t drive yourself into the ground stressing about them, but practice embracing every part of them regardless.
Embrace A Little Stress
One of the myths people tend to believe is that all stress is bad for your. In actuality, some stress is essential in our lives! Take weight lifting for example: the stress you put on your muscles eventually causes them to grow. You can’t make diamonds without pressure. Many long nights of studying can pay off with knowledge and a degree being the result.
Stress is essential in the physical, mental, and emotional worlds we live in. Imagine if you avoided any and all stress in your life? You’d have no additional knowledge, you’d be weak from never pushing your body, and your relationships would decay. Isn’t it such a good thing that there is a payoff to all the stress we experience?
For example, you could get into a conflict with a coworker that causes you a lot of stress. Instead of letting the stress fester in your body and your mind, you let it drive you to hash it out with that person. At the end of the day, you learn how to work better with that person and become a better team. Think of it like weight lifting for your inter-personal skills!
Learning how to balance a healthy amount of stress when it comes your way is a delicate skill. With a little will power, the ability to say “no”, and the right perspective you can make stress work for you rather than against you. And if you so choose, you can kiss it goodbye altogether!
