How to Make Stress Your Friend

Today is National Stress Awareness Day (as is the first Wednesday of every November, in case you want to keep track).

While many of these “national days” of awareness of something seem nonsensical (national handwriting day, grilled cheese day, and pig day come to mind), National Stress Awareness Day is a good reminder to stop for a minute and check in on your stress and the impact it’s having on your life.

According the the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, seven out of ten adults in the United States report experiencing stress or anxiety daily. Most feel that it interferes at least moderately with their lives.

And unfortunately but not surprisingly, the amount of stress many of us are feeling seems to be on the rise each year.

Why Stress Matters

Pretty much everyone would agree that stress is part of life. Maybe there was an easier time “back in the day” when some people could live stress-free, but since that’s no longer possible, we’ll talk in a minute about how to embrace the inevitable and use it to your advantage.

Even though you can’t avoid stress, it’s super-important that you monitor how much you have and work to reduce it.

It’s kind of like sugar. It’s in everything these days, making it nearly impossible to completely eliminate, but over-consumption can lead to serious health problems.

Similarly, too much stress leads to heart disease, high blood pressure, heart attack, obesity, diabetes, and a compromised immune system. 

Stress can also lead to significant mental health problems that can be just as debilitating as physical problems, such as depression, anxiety disorder, and personality disorders.

You’re likely watching your diet and avoiding unhealthy activities like smoking and excessive drinking as a means of taking care of your body, but are you likewise monitoring your stress levels?

How to Make Stress a Good Thing

Since working to eliminate stress in our lives would simply be too stressful of an undertaking, let’s look at how to make stress your friend.

If you compare the road of life to the road your car drives on, you’ll see how stress is actually helpful.

When you’re driving, you’ll often see “warning signs” along the road. 

For example, if a limited-sight intersection is coming up, there may be a “stop ahead” sign. There are “deer crossing” signs in areas with deer populations nearby, “road may flood” signs in low areas, and a series of big black arrows along the road to indicate a sharper than expected curve is ahead.

Without those signs, there would be more accidents. The signs help us drive safer.

Stress provides the warning signs for life. The signs that, if we heed them, allow us to live a happier life, make fewer mistakes, and better choices.

But it only works if we tune in to our body rather than blindly rushing through our day with a singular goal of getting to the end of the day without anything tragic happening.

It’s common to cover up those warning signs and just drive through your day fingers crossed that there’s no train approaching, no pedestrians ahead, no nasty curves that will cause us to crash.

But just like we’re grateful for those signs warning us of sharp curves ahead, we should be grateful for the times we feel stress. 

Because it’s signaling that it’s either time to change, or time to take some preventative measures -- to slow down -- if you will.

Instead of accepting and dismissing stress as a part of your life, act on it.

If you’re heading to lunch with a friend and it always seems like a stressful undertaking, it’s time to re-evaluate that friendship. 

If getting to church on Sunday morning is stressful, it’s time to look at whether you’re at the right church, or serving the right role in that church.

You get the picture. When stress appears, evaluate change you can make to reduce or eliminate it.

Strategies for Coping With Stress

Now before you get any ideas on how you'll plot to get that stress-inciting co-worker fired, or drive that noisy neighbor out of her house, let’s acknowledge that some stress can’t be eliminated.

We can’t remove the curve in the road, but we can make it easy to navigate by slowing down. And that’s exactly what we need to do when we encounter stress that’s just part of life.

Be warned that your reaction to these five strategies for coping with stress might be, “well that’s rather obvious.”

The good news is, coping with stress isn’t hard. The truth is, most of us just don’t take the time to do it. 

So whether you’re in a stressful situation and can take a little break, or preparing for a stressful day, or coming off a stressful day, pick one or more of these stress-relieving solutions to keep you on track, or get you back on track.

In fact, just incorporating these activities into your daily routines can help turn what would normally be a stressful situation into something you handle with ease.

1. Exercise: If you’re thinking you don’t have time to exercise, then you’re mistakenly thinking exercise requires buying a gym membership and some cute little matching outfits.

Exercise can be done at home, at work, outside. Wherever you can get your body moving and get your heart rate up for 20 minutes or more.

Exercise causes your brain to produce endorphins, which make your body and your mind feel better. This leads to better sleep and overall cognitive functioning, which can reduce stress in the first place.

2. Human Connection: Technology is destroying the amount of human connection we have. It’s easier and faster just to text someone, and less bothersome to send an email than to play phone tag. 

Making phone calls is likely at the bottom of the list of things you do with your phone.

This lack of human connection, other than just doing business, may be responsible for some of the increased stress in our lives.

Make it a point to talk to friends, not just about your problems, but about the good, the fun, the joys in life too.

This can be on the phone, FaceTime, or even better — in person. 

If you’re coming off a stressful event, try having a chat with a friend. Not to rehash and rant on the event, but to come back to your happy place.

3. Go Outside: There’s something about being outside that’s good for the soul.

Even if you’re busy around the house or office all day, make it a point to take 15 minutes to be outside, whether you’re just sitting or taking a walk. 

When weather conditions are extreme, you might shorten your time outside, but still get there. If nothing else, you’ll suddenly feel better when you come inside!

As often as you can, make your outside time in an area where you can have some contact with the sites and/or sounds of nature. 

4. Read a Book: Even if you haven’t read a book since your high school teacher forced you to, give this one a try. 

Choose whatever fiction you’re attracted to — a steamy romance, thrilling mystery, or classic western — and allow the author’s gift of storytelling to be your escape. 

Reading is an especially good stress-reliever at the end of the day, when you can immerse yourself in a story that entertains and relaxes. 

You’ll sleep better coming off a good chapter from a book than you will mulling over the stresses of the day.

5. Music: Music sets the tone for a good day, and provides a nice pick-me-up when you get in a funk. 

Develop a couple of playlists for different moods. A calm, relaxing set of music for when you need to take a breath, and a “get pumped” list for when you need some motivation.

Music has proven effects on the brain, and like exercise, causes the release of dopamine, a chemical that makes you feel good. 

You don’t have to listen to a certain type of music to experience these benefits, it just has to be something you enjoy.

Music is always a great option because you can put in your headphones just about anywhere and enjoy a little stress relief.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully you’re inspired to be more conscious of the stress you have in your life, the ways you can avoid it, and the ease in which you can cope with it.

You’ll find that it doesn’t take much, if any, additional time to reduce stress, it just involves a few changes in how you think and in your daily practices.

And before you’re tempted to say, “I just don’t even have five minutes to practice that stress-reducing activity,” remember that it will almost certainly make you more productive and more focused, thus actually saving you time in the long run.

If you’ve found some benefit in this post, make sure to join Kids Party Characters on Facebook, where we share daily updates about raising happy and healthy kids, as well as our best strategies for successfully working from home with kids around.

Also visit KidsPartyCharacters.com when it’s time to book your child’s next party. With over 200 characters to choose from, and packages to fit every need, we’ll take the stress out of your party planning and leave your child and her guests with a lifetime full of memories.

And if Kids Party Characters hasn’t come to your area yet? Consider starting your own!

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