How to Manage Stress During Rough Times

Newpapers. internet tabloids, magazine, most of them are announcing endless struggle in economic, financial, spiritual, emotional crises and they bring us a lot of anxieties. When these stress responses occur, our brain chemicals are off balance.  

Long periods of stress affect our memory, focus, anger and other behaviors and most of the times we find it hard to calm it down. It’s because of the brain chemical imbalance. Brain health is very crucial because it controls our body totality especially our peace of mind. If we do not have this, we feel tensed or out of our minds, fearful, worried, angry for no reason, agitated and every possible negative thoughts that sometimes steal our insanity. Read on to learn the ways to quell your anxiety and relax.

1. Healthy mind is healthy body. Psychologist suggest that an average person has 60,000 thoughts a day and nearly 80 percent of them are negative. This negativity in the thoughts becomes a behavioral pattern and imagine how it affects the way you perceive, do, decide things? A negative brain reacts negatively and that good make your body suffers as well. Retrain yourself by watching the thoughts you feed your brain. Introduce positive affirmations instead of the negative ones. When you feel sad or bored try to at least affirm yourself that you are happy, strong, and you can get through it because you are attractive and so on. These messages can empower yourself better than negative words and it reflects in your actions. A positive thinker do better and successful jobs than a pessimist. Which one would you choose?
2. Cut the intake of caffeine and nicotine. Stress, anxiety, insomnia, and a racing mind are byproducts of taking in too much caffeine and nicotine. They affect your nervous system. Try cutting your coffee and cigarettes for a week and you’ll see better results. Use herbal tea and bubble gum as alternatives.
3. Exercise and Deep breathing calms anxieties. When you are in a stressful situation, notice that you breathe shallow and you have irregular heartbeats. Often, your stresses are psychologically triggered because of the loss of oxygen. You can feed your brain with more oxygen by deep breathing (breathing from your diaphragm than using chest muscles). Exercising is a good way to give your body more oxygen as well.  
4. Watch out for your food. Vegetables are better than eating too much red meat or oily junk food. Eat healthy and your brain is healthy. The nutrients you get from healthy food can benefit your brain and gives you more concentration than eating fast food that only gives off too much fat.
5. Perform activities that is beneficial to others. Sometimes our stresses is coming from questions like what is my purpose in life? When you go out for humanitarian missions instead of going out to clubs to drink where you can’t sleep well and give you much hangover; you can feel fulfilled and useful when you see people thanking you and giving you wide smiles for reaching out a hand.

 
May you live long, live strong, and stay happy!