Take Care of Yourself

When it comes to taking care of yourself, only you know what’s right for you. And only you can take charge of your mind and body. If there are changes to make, then you have to be ready to make them.

There are some key tips to bear in mind for both your physical and mental well-being.

Physical

Take sensible measures to keep your body in good condition.

• We sit too long behind our computers. You don’t have to join a gym or work out for hours, but try to get some form of exercise every day.
• Watch what you eat and rein yourself in if you feel you’re going overboard with sweet or fatty foods.
• Get enough sleep. Between 7 and 9 hours is considered ideal for adults. If you’re regularly short of sleep, your concentration and effectiveness suffer and your energy levels decline. Make sure that you get enough sleep each night. If you’ve become used to being tired all the time, you’ll be amazed by how sharp and energetic you’ll feel once you start sleeping normally.
• Rest reduces stress. Resting at the end of the day and at the end of the week helps us to calm down our minds and bodies. It’s also important to take periodic long breaks, like a vacation or holiday. Where possible, take two weeks off rather than just one week. A common observation people make is that they don’t start to really relax until the end of their first week of vacation.

Make sure that you take your holidays and use them to relax. Also, make sure that you get enough good quality rest during the week to keep on enjoying life to its fullest.

• Do fun things that you enjoy in your leisure time to compensate for unpleasant stress at work and bring some balance into your life. A good way of getting rest and reducing long-term stress is to take up an enjoyable, non-rushed sport or hobby. If you spend all your working day competing, then don’t choose a competitive sport for your free time. Slow physical activities such as yoga or walking are good for this, as are others where there’s little to no pressure for performance. Reading novels, watching television, or socializing with friends can also be restful.

• Choose sensible working hours to allow yourself time to rest and switch off from business, and to see friends and have quality time with family.
• Avoid too much caffeine/alcohol/smoking or whatever you might indulge in. If you’re smoking or drinking more than usual, it’s usually a sign that you’re stressed.
• Get out in nature. It helps your creativity and your immune system, lifts your mood, and has a calming effect. Even if you can’t get much physical exercise, plan to get yourself out into a forest, by the sea or a lake, to a park or even your back yard. If that’s impossible, then simply looking at pictures of nature can recreate some of the same effects.

Mental

Your mind is powerful and needs taking care of. Looking after your mental state is often not as easy or straightforward as taking care of your body. Here are some suggestions:

• Create a stress-busting network. Find the people you want to support you when you’re stressed. Make a list for work and for home and write down at least four people in each list. Each person should have a distinct purpose, like listening to you or taking you for a walk. This can include doctors and therapists as well as friends and colleagues. Then check with each person to see if they are happy to be on that list for that particular reason.
• Build in breaks to rejuvenate your creativity. We said in an earlier module that most people work better in shorter blocks. Whatever work pattern you choose, you need to take breaks between activities. This can be stretching, walking around outside, watering plants, etc. Break for at least five minutes before going back to work.
• Take up creative hobbies like painting, knitting, playing guitar, etc. This access to your creative brain will stimulate it for business activities.
• Appreciate the positive. There’s always a positive side to things. Try to see this as you go through your day. If you always dwell on the negative, you’ll set your brain up to look for negative experiences.
• Practice positive self-talk. When you talk to yourself, you’re probably harsher than you’d be to an enemy. We talk to ourselves all the time, but most of the time we’re unaware of what we say. An important step towards handling stress is listening to the negative messages you tell yourself and consciously changing them to positive ones.

Make a list of all the negative things you say to yourself. Then rewrite them in a positive way.  

Example:

I can never make up my mind quickly (Negative)

I take time to consider all aspects before making up my mind (Positive)

Learn to Manage Early Stage Stress

If you look back at the stress diagram from earlier, you’ll recall that stage 2 is when you need to use some techniques to get yourself under control before your stress gets out of hand.

Below you’ll find some quick techniques you can use right away, and some longer techniques that may require preparation. Not every technique is going to be suitable for everyone, so choose the ones you think will work for you. You can try out a couple before deciding which suits you best.

Short Techniques to Manage Stress:

1. Shifting your breathing

This is the easiest way to quickly manage your stress. It moves your breathing from stressed and shallow to deep and calming and immediately reverses the body’s stress reaction. You can easily do this exercise at your desk or even in a client meeting if you’re subtle about it.

Place one hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Deliberately slow down your breathing and breathe through your abdomen. Continue until your hand on your chest is no longer moving and the hand on your stomach is gently expanding as you breathe in and contracting as you breathe out. Once you’ve achieved this rhythm, you will have lowered your blood pressure, slowed your pulse rate, and calmed your nervous system. It’s the best way to move from a stress response to a relaxation response.

2. Running up and down stairs

A quick physical action will also reverse the stress response by burning out the increased adrenaline produced by the body in “fight” mode. If you are physically able and have stairs in your building, run up and down them a few times and see the results. 

3. Puff breathing

For this exercise, you need to be in a place where others can’t see and hear you.

This is an effective breathing exercise for reducing stress quickly. Take a deep breath and then force it out through your lips only allowing a little air to escape with each puff.  Really use force to push the air out. Make sure all the air is out of your lungs before taking another deep breath and repeat the process. Do this three or four times, but no more than that or you may become lightheaded.

Longer Techniques

These are techniques such as meditation, visualization, yoga, tai chi, and so on. They need to be practiced regularly before you begin to feel the effects, but they’re well worth the effort. Practicing a stress-reducing technique on a daily or weekly basis will reduce the overall effects of outside pressures on you, causing you to become less stressed over time. You’ll be calmer and find it easier to cope. Your decision-making ability will increase as well as your mind will be clearer.