Here is a stress management technique recommended in all the latest psychological texts:
Picture yourself near a stream.
Birds are softly chirping in the crisp, cool, mountain air.
No one knows your secret place.
You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called "the world".
The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
The water is clear.
You can easily make out the face of the person you're holding under the water...
There now.....feeling better are we?
Well there we go again good people! It’s stress time! I have seen this going on at work…several friends approached me on this issue lately. So I would put up a posting on the subject I guess. What is stress? Well we have our each every own picture of it. But let’s go technical a bit here. Those aggravating mental assaults, things that go wrong and did went wrong, what goes bump in the night even in dreamland…ever had that folks? Stress is disruptive and has a cumulative effect on your brain and its functions. Your ability to learn and later remember what was taught would be affected and that would be bad if you are a student going through life without pay day yet. What we learn in the day would be store in our RAM side of the mind. It is only short “flash storage” there. When we sleep at night, the mind would download all that was stored in RAM section into our HDD or hard disk drives for permanent memory. We may recollect these information for future usage. But then again, if we are stressed we won’t remember anything that was at all.
As science gains greater insight into the consequences of stress on the brain, the picture that emerges is not a pretty one. A chronic overreaction to stress overloads the brain with powerful hormones that are intended only for short-term duty in emergency situations. Their cumulative effect damages and kills precious brain cells. Dumb dumber dumbest at their best. The term "stress" is short for distress, a word that had evolved from Latin that means "to draw or pull apart, drawn asunder."
Look, I don't care how hectic your schedule is,
I don't care how fast you want to go,
You have just got to learn to use the elevators like everyone else does.
When you hit that stress spot, when you blew your top and when you went berserk, inside your body all system is on full alert for World War 3! Your adrenal gland would release a substance that would act as instigator to your brain, and the substance is known as cortisols. Cortisols would travel devilishly into the hippocampus section of the brain and from here, these cortisols would re-enact Karate Kid part 1 to 3 all in one showing. What prevent this from happening are our hormones. Hormones that would be deployed on full deployment and they would swiftly track down these rebel cortisols one by one and send them to the bladder for immediate purging (nangis sampai terkencing bagi kanak-kanak) or sometimes mostly for adults we just sweat them all out. Children has lesser controls over the whole process as oppose to us adults. So go easy on them the next time they wet themselves in a tantrum.
You have now returned to calmness again, you have arrived to a state of body, mind metabolic equilibrium which is known as homeostasis. When a perceived threat has moved over and away from you, your brain shall initiate a reversal of the whole process described earlier and this would also disperse various biochemicals throughout the body. But you see, the state of homeostasis is only obtainable when there is absolute balance (equilibrium – I hate that word) between the agitating agents mentioned earlier and their counter measures mentioned earlier as well; the cortisols and the hormones. If for any reason they fail to strike a deal for peace and demilitarization somewhere in there, than you would continue to experience imbalance that would drag on to other parts of your life. To your sleep pattern, your relationships, your eating habits – everything! And it would change you in no small ways. As we age, it even gets worst. Once you have activated your stress response cortisols, the brain would actively keep them ready for efficient faster redeployment again (should they be needed) just in case. And this would make you tense and fidgety at the very least 24/7/365.
Stress has its purpose on our body developments. When you are stressed out, your body releases norepinephrine. The function of this substance is to make us think more positively, it makes threats or problems or even danger looks less a threat and more a challenge that you want to overcome. It is when you feel that you would like to overcome that fear for a greater goal or accomplishment, it gives you confident and it helps you to remember things and it also helps to develop our thinking faculty much further. It’s like the saying, “once beaten twice shy”.
Stress management is the key, not stress elimination. The challenge in this day and age is to not let the sympathetic nervous system stay chronically aroused. This may require knowledge of techniques that work to activate your relaxation response. Some kinds of acute stress are beneficial. For example, Ohio State University researchers found that stress from engaging in a memory task activated the immune system, whereas the stress from passively watching a violent video weakened immunity. Ever had that feeling like when you stepped out of a cinema and you suddenly feel like coming down with fever but recovered quickly soon after? The result produced by the Ohio State University suggest that time-frames and work pressure, even if the are totally annoying for a short time, could be a good thing that helps strengthen the body's defenses for the long run.
I think that overcoming a stress would make us better person, more weathered and less edgy on the edge. On the whole, none of us could avoid stress. Maybe we could lessen it, but no way could we eliminate them all together. So the key here is managing stress, effective stress management. How do you do that?
Well it is a known fact that stress causes reductions in productivity, increases managements chores and it would in the long run destroy anything on its path if left untended. The key to de-stressing in the moment is getting away from or removing your self from the stressor. Developing new habits which regularly remove you and distract you from stressors and stressful situations and pressures is essentially how to manage stress on a more permanent basis.
Hehehe! Hohoho!
Humor is one of the greatest and quickest devices for reducing stress hence the saying “laughter is the best medicine”. Humor works because laughter produces helpful chemicals in the brain. Humor also gets your brain thinking and working in a different way - it distracts you from having a stressed mindset. Distraction is a simple effective de-stressor - it takes your thoughts away from the stress, and thereby diffuses the stressful feelings.
Therefore most people will feel quite different and notice a change in mindset after laughing and being distracted by something humorous. So laugh yourself silly at any chance you get! Do not be afraid to laugh out loud in the office!
Whoops!
Go for a short quick really brisk walk outside. Yes, actually leave the building. Change your environment. Walk away from the stress point. Breathe in some fresh air and smell the atmosphere. Trees, rain, flowers, freshly cut grass - doesn't matter - stimulate your senses with new things.
Go get a big cup or a bottle of water. See, when we drink we need to go to the toilet to take care of business and that helps when those wandering angry substance gets purged out and flushed down for good. Anyway, drinking water is always good. I am talking about plain mineral water. This is why you must keep your body properly hydrated by regularly drinking water (most people need 4-8 glasses of water a day).
Take a quick nap. It is nature's way of recharging and re-energizing. A quick 10-30 minutes sleep is very helpful to reduce stress. Sleeping in the day is not lazy or un-productive.
Extreme sporting activities
Take up a new hobby, do what you like as much as you could. Include the family along in it. That would really help in so many ways.
Crying as a “de-stressor”. Whatever the science behind crying, a good bout of it does seem to release tension and stress for many people. Of course how and where you choose to submit to this most basic of emotional impulses is up to you. In the middle of a staff meeting or during an important presentation is probably not a great idea, but there are more private situations and you should feel free to try it from time to time if the urge takes you. Try scheduling one. If by the time you reached that time frame and you feel silly doing it then just ignore it. That means you have already unstressed yourself somewhere along the line from the actual stress point to getting there. It’s like telling yourself that you would distress somewhere later, and with that in mind the brain readily absorbs stress around. But seriously, don’t catch a cough or flu doing it.
Well these are some of the ways to unstressed yourself. It was written with much shortened lines here and there, but I am sure that each of us has their own de-stressing activity to do. Gardening, sleeping, washing the car, watching TV, taking a walk, jogging, or to just read a book as a means of un-stressing. I have a few of my own really. But frankly, at home is my place to relax. So for me, home is always my sweet home and in the kitchen you can find much loving. Alhamdullilah.
