5 Simple Steps To Eliminate Stress From Your Life Forever

Use This Effective Tool To Get Rid Of Stress Forever

We’ve looked at recent psychological research to teach you how to eliminate stress from your life forever.

We all know that yoga, meditation, long walks, relaxing baths, and so on, are great ways of reducing stress levels. But the results are often short-lived. How can you get rid of stress in the long-term? Is it possible to feel relaxed and in control the vast majority of the time? How about all of the time?

I’m going to share with you 5 simple steps to eliminate stress from your life for good. Exciting stuff!

I’m using the word “stress” to describe psychological stress, i.e. the emotional feelings of strain and pressure, and an inability to cope with what life throws at you.

Before we dive in, let’s get some context. Why is it important to get rid of stress in the long-term?

Stress is one of the biggest contributing factors to chronic disease. Stress can give way to a whole host of physical and mental health problems, from memory loss (Han et al., 2017) to chronic diarrhea (Tack et al., 2012).

And let’s not forget that having symptoms, such as abdominal pain, wind, bloating, and other stomach problems, can increase your stress levels even more! (Caetano et al., 2017)

Even doctors are becoming sick due to work-related stress (Smith, Goldacre, and Lambert, 2017).

No matter how good your healthcare professionals are, or how closely you follow their recommendations, one thing’s for certain: if you can’t keep your stress levels under control, it’s almost impossible to get back to a good state of health.

You must tackle your emotional and physical health simultaneously.

Now that I’ve set the scene, you’re ready to start learning how to rid yourself of stress forever.

Earlier, we described psychological stress as “the emotional feelings of strain and pressure, and an inability to cope with what life throws at you”.

Ultimately, your feelings are brought on by your thoughts. Therefore, by changing your thoughts, you can change your emotions.

This is the basic principle of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT): a simple yet very effective stress-reduction strategy.

Research shows that by changing your thoughts, you can change your emotions. This can either have a positive or a negative impact on your life. Ultimately, you’re in control of how you feel!

The following 5 steps are based on the principles of CBT. They’re used by millions of psychotherapists and counsellors every day to help their patients get rid of stress once and for all.

Now you get to practice CBT on yourself!

1. Write down a situation that’s making you stressed

Pick a situation that you’re stressed about right at this moment and write it down on a piece of paper. Don’t write any of your thoughts or feelings about the situation at this point. Stick to the facts about what’s actually happening.

For example, you might write: “My mananger just asked to meet me in her office without any explanation or indication as to why.”

2. Write down how you feel in this situation

Here’s where you get to tap into how you feel in this particular situation. Are you stressed, worried, or anxious? Are you angry or upset? List all of your emotions on the same piece of paper.

In our example, you might write: “I feel uncertain, concerned, agitated, edgy, apprehensive, and scared”.

3. Write down which thoughts are resulting in these emotions

There are 8 types of negative thought process that can lead to the stressful emotions we’ve just mentioned:

The third step is to go through each of these thought processes and identify which thoughts you’re currently having to make you feel the emotions that you wrote down in step 2. Write down these thoughts on your sheet of paper.

You may not be able to relate to all 8 thought processes for your particular situation. That’s absolutely fine. Just go through each of the 8 thought processes one by one and see which of them resonate with you.

In our example, you may put: “This can only mean one thing. I’m going to get fired!!” (polarized thinking), “I should work evenings and weekends, like Rob. He’s getting better stats than me.” (shoulds), and “I was responsible for keeping those files up-to-date. If only I had put in a bit more effort on that project. Then, the whole team wouldn’t have done so poorly last month. It’s all my fault.” (personalizing).

4. Challenge these thoughts and replace them with positive ones

Here’s the fun part. Pick at your thoughts until you realize how crazy they are. Pretend you’re in court, where there must be undeniable proof before a conclusion is made. Be a scientist and develop a few alternative hypotheses.

What else might be true in your situation that’s not as upsetting? How can you replace these thoughts with other, more positive ones?

Write these new thoughts down.

For example, you could write: “My boss could want to see me to congratulate me on all of my hard work on this month’s project. She knows that my management skills have been an asset to this company over the past few years. She may even want to give me a promotion!”

5. Read these new thoughts until you start to believe them

These new thoughts are just as likely to be accurate as the ones that you initially wrote down in step 3. In fact, now that you’re thinking with a clear, rational mind, your new thoughts are much more likely to be right on point.

Read your new, positive thoughts and say them out loud until you start to believe them. Write them out a hundred times if you have to.

Make a conscious effort to use these new phrases when you talk to others about your situation. Notice how good it feels when you say them out loud.

And, as if by magic, all of your stress will start to melt away!

Now for a little reminder: how will this 5 step technique help you eliminate stress forever?

As we said earlier, your emotions are controlled by your thoughts. And you’re in control of your thoughts. Therefore, challenging negative thoughts and beliefs is all it takes to say goodbye to stress and anxiety for good and hello to joy and contentment.

It’s for this reason that CBT techniques have been shown to:

If you keep practicing these 5 steps during every stressful situation you find yourself in, you’ll start to re-program your brain so that you start to think more positively all the time.

Then, you won’t even need to use this technique anymore because you won’t feel stressed! Ah, the wonders of neuroplasticity.

Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter at www.onyourplate.ca/blog.


Written by Sophie Ash, BSc (Hons), DipION, NNCP — Research Analyst, Nutritional Therapist, and Gastrointestinal Specialist (www.onyourplate.ca).

Sophie Ash, BSc (Hons)

Written by

Sophie is an IBS Specialist and Online Educator at On Your Plate Inc. You can take her first online course at www.udemy.com/the-fundamentals-of-ibs-management

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