Move Beyond Stress

10 Practical Ways To Decrease Stress

Rachel Ford — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:47:40 +0000

Unfortunately, the reality is that life can be stressful. De-stressing does not mean eliminating any and all problems in your life. After all, there will be conflicts, there will be arguments, there will be stress. However, there are ways to decrease the pressure and make life more enjoyable. Here are 10 practical ways to do so.

1. Money is the most common root of stress. Making money, paying off debts, supporting others and getting tired physically, mentally, and emotionally in the process is stressful. Face your money problems. You can do this by consulting with a financial planner, and learning to live within your means.

2. Exercise is a fantastic way to let go of the tension inside you. Grab a friend and join a gym, or sign up for a class. If you would rather not spend money, then go jogging or take long walks. Exercise not only clears the mind, it also detoxifies your body and rejuvenates you.

3. Start eating better. A healthy diet will make it possible for you to think better, be more alert, sleep better, and strengthen your body with needed nutrients, minerals and vitamins.

4. Organize your home. Start with your bedroom and throw out things you haven’t used in years. The less clutter you have, the easier it is to move around your house. You will also have less to dust and less things to worry about. There are some people who fear losing things and end up keeping everything out in the open. Other people just feel comfort in having old things around as a reminder of happier days. The happiness is in your heart, and not necessarily in objects or papers. If you need to store anything, put them away in labeled containers. If you want to see them, then hang them up on the walls, or prop them up in display cabinets.

5. From the house, proceed to organizing your workspace. This will help you find things better, and focus on the “need to do” instead of scrambling around for things to do.

6. Decrease the work you do by delegating. If you tend to keep accepting jobs and projects regardless of your load, learn to be choosy.

7. Stress is also present because you may have too much on your plate. It’s just like a buffet table, there’s no need to pile up your plate with food because you can always add later on. Do the same with your life. Don’t assume too much responsibility or always be “on” 24/7.

8. Start a journal. If you don’t enjoy handwriting, use the computer. You can keep track of your day, and find relief laughing at past mistakes or fun times you wrote about, just like you did if you had a diary as a child and started to read it today. The advantage of having a journal is that you can release tension without having to talk to anyone, if you don’t want to.

9. On the other hand, there really is no substitute as having a friend to lean on. You can share your intimate thoughts, desires, frustrations, and dreams, and not be judged.

10. Enjoy life. There will always be something good about your day. Actively seek that, and the stress will slowly dissipate.

How To Use Affirmations To Combat Stress

Rachel Ford — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:15:27 +0000

. For anyone who is struggling with or suffering from a great deal of stress, sustaining a positive outlook can do a great deal in helping cope with incredibly demanding and frustrating situation. One method of trying to keep a positive mindset is through the use of positive affirmations. Affirmations work by influencing the subconscious mind to think in a particular way. Doing this will definitely increase your capability to cope with and manage stress.

Using positive affirmations mostly consists of utilizing statements said "out loud" in addition to internal dialogue. Basically making optimistic statements as well as repeating them over and over again is highly effective. By continually repeating positive affirmations they are going to ultimately seep into somebody's subconscious, influence it and sooner or later determine how they will act in response to particular circumstances.

There are a couple of things that you need to include to make sure that your affirmations will be successful and effective. They need to be positive, framed in the present tense and to some extent, believable. Trying to affirm that you will never have any stress is not only unachievable, but also not very believe able. Your mind knows that there are times when you will feel stress and it will simply reject such a crazy statement.

Most importantly, affirm what you want not what you don't want. Thinking in terms of how you'd prefer to feel is the key to making affirmations successful. So if you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed or anxious then you want them to framed using words like calm and relaxed. For example, instead of saying "I am not stressed", say "I feel calm and relaxed.". It's a simple differentiation, but one that is often overlooked, especially when you are in the thick of a stressful situation.
Here are some examples of good positive affirmations for stress management.

I feel relaxed and composed
I am breathing in calmness with every inhalation and releasing tension with every exhalation
I allow myself to let go of tension with every breath that I take.
I am feeling deeper relaxed than I've ever felt before
I can easily feel relaxed and at ease whenever I choose to
I choose to react calmly in all situations
I love feeling relaxed and at peace
My sense of calm and inner serenity grows every time I say these affirmations.

Now, make up some of your own following the above guidelines. Repeat them to yourself often throughout the day, not just when you’re feeling stressed, and enjoy a sense of increased calmness in any situation.

How To Break The Habit Of Stress

Rachel Ford — Sun, 30 May 2010 08:04:13 +0000

If you are wanting to stop the yo-yo pattern of stress creation and stress reduction, you're going to have to examine your life in detail, find the real root causes of stress, to make the changes you know you will need to make, in order to stop stress from taking over your life completely.

If you have stress-creating, self-harming habits, you're most likely aware of them. If you're spending more than you earn, eat when you're upset emotionally, or lashing out at your loved ones whenever you let pent-up anger get the best of you, these are not healthy ways to run a life – and you know this.

You can pinpoint the root cause of the stress that exists in your life with reasonable ease. Sit down with pen and paper,then go through all the various areas of your life, then rate each one on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 equating to very low stress, and 10 equating to very high.

If money scores a stress rating of 10, you NEED to focus your energy on creating newer, better habits that will push this number down to a 1. And as you work towards crafting and installing your new habits, keep up your analysis – keep and expand on what works, and toss what doesn't.

Sitting and whining about all the stress that you have in your life is useless. You absolutely must actively work to reduce it. Of course, these changes are going to take time – and time in this case means lots of it. You're changing courses, not teleporting to a fixed location.

You might falter from time to time, but drifting mildly off course on rare occasions doesn't mean your course is completely blown. Just get back on course (by repeating your good habits), and your normal reactions to stress will BECOME the good habits you might struggle with at first.

Overcome Fears and Phobias With Hypnosis

Rachel Ford — Sat, 29 May 2010 07:53:01 +0000

In our modern world, we have such a busy and anal-retentive method of dealing with the world, we don't even call our fears "fear." We have all sorts of silly, nonsensical names for it, such as "anxiety" and "stress." For the remainder of this article, I will only use the word "fear," as that's what we're really talking about – fear, and the illnesses it causes.

We have obligations in life, such as commuting, work, family, and our children. These tiny fears, brought on by failure scenarios, can build up until they culminate in a total breakdown, which can include simply collapsing, or succumbing to health problems such as high blood pressure or heart disease. When fear stretches out and takes over a life, it can cause sleep disorders, depression, fibromyalgia, and a multitude of other chronic conditions. It is impossible to completely eliminate stress from our lives – but we can stop these things from making us afraid, and use the fear constructively.

Drug therapy doesn't work on fear-based conditions or phobias The best course of treatment for fear is to eliminate the physical responses to it, by relaxing – meditation works well for this. Unfortunately, most people walking around either don't take the time or believe they "can't" find time to meditate everyday. However, hypnotherapy can work on the physical reactions we receive from our nagging fears. When in hypnosis the body becomes so completely relaxed that the dangers of these fear-based chemical issues start to fade away. The effects fear has on the body can be reversed by way of relaxation.

You may not even need to visit a hypnotherapist if your objective is combating your nagging fears and and anxiety. Self-hypnosis can actually be as effective as the services of a professional. Once you have a good understanding of the techniques, you can use them wherever and whenever needed, to immediately halt the damage before it reaches extreme or unmanageable levels. Of course, a trained hypnotherapist should still be employed to provide hypnotic suggestions related to enacting behavioral or stimulus-response changes.

But if your primary intent is to just use hypnosis to relax to help combat the harmful effects of your stress and anxiety,self-hypnosis can actually be as effective and is a much more cost-effective treatment option. The benefits are much the same as very deep meditation, and can be done anywhere.

If you begin using self-hypnosis on a regular basis in your efforts to reduce the hold fear has over you, you'll notice the positive physical effects taking place almost immediately. You'll sleep longer and better, you'll feel more relaxed, and your blood pressure will decrease.

Manage Your Stress By Managing Your Time

Rachel Ford — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:50:41 +0000

Studies have once size-full wp-image-221" height="195" src="http://movebeyondstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/time-stress.jpg" title="time stress" width="200" />again proven the obvious, in that stress management and time management go hand in hand like a couple of teenage sweethearts. Pressure creates a fear which manifests itself in the symptoms known as "stress," which can paralyze a person from finishing what they set out to accomplish.

While time management is not an inborn skill for anyone, everyone can (and really ought to) learn this skill set. Time management really just comes down to organizing one's thoughts, and then letting things fall into place.

Here are 5 tips that will help you to become a master of time management. Not only that, but they'll also help you handle stressors no matter where they originate.

1. Learn to make decisions well. Experts say that having being able to make good decisions is a key ingredient of effective time management This is because a person who can decide and prioritize what's at hand can easily eliminate a lot of time wasted contemplating, and instead be able to get on with the next important task. Learning to make effective, quick decisions is a great start to decreasing your stress and helps you avoid the "paralysis by analysis" syndrome.

2. Learn how to plan. Experts state the obvious when they say that the people who can plan, can also manage their time. Planning involves patience and preparation, which allows one to arrange what must be done before it turns into a crisis situation. Those who are ahead can work at a brisk but comfortable pace, and correct issues as they arise in an efficient manner – and then perform the same activities later on, making fewer mistakes.

3. Learn to manage your activities well, and use your time effectively to accomplish as much as possible. This is the meat and potatoes of time management, and then you can focus your attention on what is truly important. Time management techniques can be learned online, or through the stories of those who have learned to make every unit of time work as well as humanly possible.

4. Gain the tools you need. To take control of your time and manage your stress productively, you may need tools or gadgets that help you to organize and store the information you need, and recall it. If this means a smart phone, get it. If this means a pen and pad of paper, get it. If this means hiring a virtual assistant for a reasonable price, get them. If you need to shell out to reach your full potential, it's an investment in yourself.

5. Just do it! Learning time management skills in a "that's nice, I'll think about it" kind of way is a step in the right direction… but a journey of a thousand miles consists of more than a single step. By actually practicing what you've learned, you can actually get ahead.

How A Dose Of Gratitude Can Reduce Stress

Rachel Ford — Mon, 24 May 2010 03:57:23 +0000

We all have our whiny, "moan and groan" moments, simply because the nature of humanity is to never be completely satisfied, regardless of how much we have. As a species, we're always on the lookout for something more. How often does anyone actually take a moment and feel gratitude for all that they have in their life? Hint, it's usually not as often as they complain about what they don't have.

Happiness isn't really about money and material possessions – it's about the little, everyday things that we generally take for granted. What we all need to do is to feel grateful for what we do have, rather than whining about what we don't.

If you think you don't have anything to be grateful for, you're wrong – everyone has something. Maybe your blessing is the sound of your young child's laughter, and the way that they want to be around you all the time. It could be spending time with someone you care about – family, a good friend you haven't seen in a long time, a lover who wants to come over and "catch up." You might be thankful for that person that let you into the traffic lane.

Try this little experiment. First think about what you don't have, what is wrong with your life or what you need to change. And notice how you feel. Are you feeling positive or negative, happy or sad. Then just let that thought go and move onto part two of this exercise.

Now, close your eyes, take a deep breath and take a moment to think about just one thing that is good in your life. How does that good thing make you feel? Go ahead, try it and notice how you feel after wards. If you're like most people you should notice a shift in your mood, perhaps a smile even creeps onto your face, and you somehow feel just a bit more positive than you did when you where thinking about what you don't have.

Wouldn't you prefer to feel more positive, more often? By adding a dose of gratitude to every day, you can. Here's a daily exercise that will help you do just that. You can do this every evening or each morning or both. Whenever you choose to do it, make an effort to do it at the same time each day for a full thirty days.

Give yourself a couple of minutes to just go within and settle your mind. You might want to close your eyes and pay attention to your breath or imagine a cleansing white light going through your entire body. Whatever works for you is fine.

Now think about all the wonderful things that exist in your life. Allow yourself to be filled with the warmth of gratitude that you feel for having these things. Now take out a notebook or journal and list five of them down on paper. You may want to buy a new blank notebook and make this your "gratitude journal".

Do this everyday for a month and the impact on your emotional well being and attitude will be phenomenal.

5 Steps to Dealing with Disappointment

Rachel Ford — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:32:18 +0000

Everybody, at one time or another, will experience disappointment – even you. It’s part of the human experience. This does not mean that you should give up hope on everything you want to do or every positive thought you may have.

You should definitely pay attention to the disappointments in your life rather than trying to just ignore them. There is a lot to be learned from them, but there is a difference between paying attention and obsessing. If you know how to effectively deal with disappointments that come into your life, then you can experience a sense of personal growth and confidence.

Here are five steps to help you not only deal with a disappointing event or situation, but also emerge a stronger person from them.

Step 1 – Look inwards. Instead of burying your feelings and expecting them to go away (you know they won’t, don’t you?) you need to admit, if only to yourself how you really feel. This means that you need to express how you are feeling about the event that has happened, not how you feel about the people around you. The goal is not to blame others for what has happened to you, but instead to understand how you are feeling about the situation.

Step 2- Put things in perspective. After you have sorted out your feelings, you should take a closer look at what has happened to see how it is going to affect you in the long run. Try taking a long walk in order to think about the situation and put things into perspective. Looking at the bigger picture will help you to view the disappointment in a different light.

Step 3 – Learn from it. Sometimes it’s hard to get past the negative emotions that go with a big disappointment. One great strategy for doing this is to think about what you’ve learned from that experience. Imagine different ways that you could have handled things differently then let it go. This will help you regain a sense of control as well as giving you some good tools to add to your life skills toolbox.

Step 4 – Time to change. When a disappointment comes into your life, it often means that there is something that needs to be changed. That change may be minor and easy, but sometimes you need to be willing to make a bigger change if you want to end up with different results. Spend some time creating new goals. Ones that fit better with everything you’ve learned from the previous three steps.

Step 5 – Moving forward. Now take your new goals and focus all of your attention on them rather than your disappointment. Imagine that your new goal is a plant that you nourish and water with positive expectations. The more you focus on your new goals the stronger and healthier they will become. And before you know it, the disappointment that you have experienced will just wither away.

The Journey Of Self Discovery

Rachel Ford — Wed, 19 May 2010 11:36:35 +0000

Don’t you sometimes just feel like you’re too rushed and unsure about your direction in life? We all pass this stage that hits us ever so often. The fact is, you will be constantly facing forks in your life wherein you question yourself, and you question what you are doing. It’s part of the process called life. If you don’t get to this point regularly, then you should also worry because it means you have become too engrossed with the details of your routine, you forget about taking care of your inner self.

Inner peace means being able to stand in front of a mirror and be happy with what you see. It means being able to walk out your door and have a purpose. To find your inner self, you need self-reflection. This isn’t something you can buy and copy from someone else. This is work, but don’t worry because it’s a pleasant self-discovering adventure that will bring you inner peace.

Ask yourself these questions.

1. What do I want to achieve and be known for?

Without intending to be morose, have you ever imagine what people would say about you behind your back? Would they talk about your achievements in business, your relationships, spirituality, or would they have nothing to say except bland statements like, “He was okay as a friend”?

Write down around 50 good things about yourself, using the present tense. You can be as detailed as you want, like being good at talking to strangers, or making coffee. Make sure to write it in declarative sentences using the “I am … “ format.

2. Who am I?

Try to reflect on what your beliefs are and make concrete statements affirming what your opinions are about different things – like government, religion, family, friends, even simple food product preferences. This will help you bring into the conscious mind what you feel in your subconscious.

Your subconscious is the part of your being that stores all your feelings and experiences. For instance, people who believe in hypnosis claim to tap this part of the person who may have embedded deep, dark secrets that are now affecting his life. In this instance, hypnosis is not necessary because it is risky, besides, you can achieve more through conscious reflection.

3. What are my hopes for my life?

You can do this exercise by creatively drawing pictures in your head about where you want to go; who you want to be friends with; what you want to achieve; and superlative dreams of fame, good fortune, and happiness.

4. What questions about myself do I need answers for?

This part gets a little more exciting because you need to write down questions about yourself you would want answers for, like your goal for the month, or what stage you would like your relationship with your partner to reach. These questions should be as detailed and positive as possible. Never write a question that puts doubt on who you are.

Now, you need to make this process a way of life. Buy a diary or journal and start writing how you feel, what you want, and continue to ask yourself questions. The purpose of this is to concretize your inner feelings, so that you get a vivid picture to focus on, and give you better direction in life.

Learning self-reflection is not easy, but it gets easier once you keep doing it regularly. It will also need dedication, but then isn’t your life worth the effort?

Follow Your Nose – Using Aromatherapy For Stress

Rachel Ford — Tue, 11 May 2010 03:20:30 +0000

Firstly, I want to make it clear that I am not an Aromatherapist. I haven't formally studied aromatherapy, but I do use it myself and have found it wonderfully beneficial. All the info in this article is from my own personal experience, if you want more information on the subject, then I urge you to either seek out a specialist in the area or do some research on your own. There are plenty of books and info in the subject out there so it will be fairly easy for you to find the info you're looking for.

Stress makes it all too easy for us to just shut down, and ignore the things that really matter in life. But what if you could reduce your stress just by engaging your sense of smell? It's been discovered that aromatherapy can produce real, long lasting results. It can soothe frazzled nerves and help you to relax. And there's nothing you need to do except smell.

Scented baths are also popular ways to relax. Since they relax your body with the warm bath water, they help to take the aromatherapy effect even further. A good long soak in warm bath with a scent such as chamomile is a way better way to relax than eating a Twinkie. To say nothing of the fact that it has no calories (unless you drink it, which you really shouldn't).

Now, aromatherapy isn't spraying perfume onto a pillow. Perfumes are commercial blends of scents, which are NOT the same as aromatherapy oils. They are also known as essential oils, and they're made from plant extracts.

Some plant extracts have a calming effect. The essential oils that are known to deliver the best stress relief are lavender, patchouli, chamomile and geranium. You'll also finf that there are several tools available to allow you to put puffs of essential oils into the air around you, so you can have these desired fragrances all through your environment. Or you can just add a few drops to a cotton ball and take a whiff.

Relaxation is not the only possible goal you might have. Maybe you're feeling sluggish, tired and exhausted because of a particularly stressful situation. The best extracts for shaking off the malaise are peppermint and ginger as well as citrus scents like lemon and lime.

And there are some other great effects you can garner from essential oils. Rosemary will help your mind feel less clouded, and resolve your confusion a bit. Sandalwood is awesome if you're suffering from sleeplessness or depression. And juniper berry is excellent if your stresses tend to boil over into anger.

Of course, you should consult a doctor or other suitably qualified person before ingesting any extracts – while aromatherapy can benefit most anyone, there is always the slight chance that it could be an unknown allergy that you might have. It's better to be safe than sorry, after all. But smelling them should be reasonably safe. Not to mention that aromatherapy can be practiced most anywhere – home, car, possibly even your office (if your co-workers aren't bothered by it).

So start using essential oils to give stress the boot,. You can be confident that tapping into the healing powers of aromatherapy will give you more benefits than throwing down a box of cookies and a quart of ice cream. Just because your day goes a little south doesn't mean your health has to suffer for it.

Where Do You Find Happiness In A Stressful World

Rachel Ford — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:58:28 +0000

What makes us happy is as individual as our fingerprints. Whereas something may bring a great deal of joy to one person, it may not bring the same type of contentment and enjoyment to another. Often enough, we're more happy with in our lives than we realize. The constant demands of everyday life can overshadow things like our own feelings. It can also deprive us of the time to enjoy what makes us smile. If you were to take a moment and think about the things that actually make you feel happiness and contentment, you might find that those things are already around you.

There are going to be those times when we get into a negative slump, and just haven't lately experienced the conditions we regard as necessary to being happy and contented. If this sounds like you, then you need to determine what changes you'll have to make, in order to make your life a happier one. In most cases, the tiny things are what cause the most happiness – and the best part is that you have the ability to gain more of these things, by way of working toward them.

You alone are in control of your level of how much happiness you choose to enjoy. No-one else will grant these things to you, as they're inside you – your efforts will either find and work toward them, or not. You can take positive action toward giving yourself happiness and contentment, or stay in a rut – change takes work.

If you want to really understand what it means to be happy, the first thing you need to do is look at your emotions and ask yourself a few questions. These questions include,"What aspects of my life make me feel contented right now?" and "What do I enjoy doing in my life?" Once you understand exactly what your respective visions of contentment and happiness are, you can then build the things you currently have, and turn your life into what you want it to be.

There aren't any magic bullets, and there is no wand to wave that will grant you happiness and contentment. These are emotions which are already inside you. All you have to do is realize what they are and develop them, in order to start enjoying life to the fullest. You can find happiness in your family life, at work, in nature or with a pet, just to rattle off a very few general examples. In fact, happiness can be found anywhere – but most importantly, it can be found inside you.