How To Chill The F Out And Reduce Stress.
You’re stressed out. Let’s stop pretending you’re not. And guess what? I am too. Apparently, some people think I’m living in a bubble and super-successful.
How wrong they are.
According to my latest cortisol test, I scored 800. The normal range is between 0–400. This makes me damn qualified to deliver this advice to you.
I’m going through loads of stress right now firsthand and there’s a few things that have helped me.
Here’s how to chill the F out and reduce stress:
Quit overworking.
Working 10-hour plus days isn’t efficient. The work you do when you’re tired and stressed is rubbish. You end up sending emails that are sarcastic, rude and maybe a little angry (okay very angry).
There’s a point where you need to chill the F out and enjoy life. You only get one life so you may as well use it to do more than just work.
“Work, work, work is the best way to become a stress ball of nothingness”
Whatever purpose or goal you’re working towards will be lost if you overwork. It’s not cool and Zucks won’t hi-five you for it.
A word on napping.
When you change up your diet, you realize that a healthy lunch can be eaten in about 15-minutes. This leaves time for a quick nap. I’ve been doing 15-minute naps and it’s really helped me manage my stress challenges.
It’s no wonder companies like Google have special furniture designed to nap in.
Firsthand, it’s helped me regain some energy after lunch. All the greats like Winston Churchill did it and that was because it works.
There’s a stigma around napping because people see you sleeping and think you’re lazy.
The opposite is true. Sacrificing 15-minutes to have extra energy in the afternoon is worth it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of and it will help you chill.
Start your day right.
Wake up, drink 500ml of water, get the body moving for ten minutes and eat a good breakfast. A good breakfast, by the way, is not sugar and carbs — it’s eggs, a smoothie, maybe some fruit, half an avocado and perhaps some beans.
Excess carbs and sugar just spike your blood sugar and this is not useful for your stress levels.
Notice how you feel.
Do you have brain fog? Do you forget stuff easily? After lunch, do you crash into a heap? Do you get headaches?
Chances are you’re stressed. Most of us are. Noticing how you’re feeling is the first step.
“Forget pretending that headaches and feeling sh*t is normal and admit what’s really going on”
Our jobs are more stressful than ever. Combine that with our poor diet and we have a recipe for stress.
Unfortunately, you can’t solve the stress issue by yourself. Medical intervention will be needed at some point.
To deal with stress, I’ve found a functional medicine doctor to be far more useful than conventional medicine involving prescription drugs.
Knowing why you’re stressed is the key. It could be your environment, food, work, romantic relationships, genetics, hormones, gut — the list goes on.
Get a professional to run some tests. In my case, high levels of mercury in the blood made my stress problem worse.
The glorious phone.
During my recent stressful weeks, I experimented with my phone. Some days I had it on flight mode, other days it was on loud and then there were times it was kept in the next room away from me.
I learned a few things about stress and my phone:
- If the phone is in flight mode, I’ll probably still use it and toggle flight mode on and off
- A phone that is not on silent completely disrupts what I’m doing. I lose my train of thought and become stressed trying to remember where I left off.
- Turning off all notifications on my phone made me feel heaps better
The winning trick with my phone to make me less stressed was to leave it at home. It seems drastic but it was the one time I felt free, less stressed and like I didn’t have anybody to answer to.
So much of our stress comes from our phone. Once we realize that fact and take steps to minimize the issue, our stress levels can improve.
30 minutes of TV.
Okay, every self-help junkie is going to hate me for this one. TV is supposed to be evil.
Well, during my stressful days, I found a calm program like Britain’s ‘Grand Designs’ helped me tune out the recurring thoughts in my head about work.
Instead of thinking for hours about work challenges, I was distracted by beautiful landscapes.
The 30 minutes I give up can prevent hours of wasted time spent distracted with thoughts about my work.
I wouldn’t advise watching just any old show — especially the news. I found that switching on the news increased my stress levels more.
TV shows focused on travel or relaxing or sport can often be the best ones to experiment with. Either way, take a load off for 30 minutes.
Sunny days.
Sitting in the park on a hot Saturday with the sun shining helps me relax. The heat does weird things to my mind and it’s very comforting. Being stuck all day indoors (especially for a blogger) is not good.
The outdoors resets my mind and if nothing else, the sun gives me some Vitamin D.
Sleep some more.
On days where I felt extra stressed, I tried sleeping for longer than eight hours.
“The extra time in bed helped me to relax rather than waking up nervously because my alarm has gone off and I’m trying to maximize every minute, of every day, to impress the self-help gods”
Sleep is a fantastic way to help manage stress.
Natural supplements.
There are some natural supplements we can take that will also help with stress. They typically have ingredients such as magnesium and Rhodiola Root. Seeing a naturopath is another option if you are a fan of herbal medicine.
Either way, adding a couple of supplements has been helpful for me and it makes managing stressful periods that can’t be avoided easier. It would be nice to think we can avoid all stressful situations but that’s impossible.
The power of walking.
Taking a walk around the neighborhood has been another tool I’ve used for dealing with stress.
On these walks, I’ve noticed things about where I live here in Australia that I never noticed before.
Walking has been known for generations to clear the mind and with it comes a reduction in stress.
If you insist on being hyper-productive, then you could do your phone calls on the walk. I personally don’t do this as I want to be fully present but plenty of people do — and it works!
Fresh air, exercise, seeing the local community and getting outdoors are all positives. You can’t go wrong with a bit of walking.
Chill about the future.
Kids, marriage, buying a house, owning a car, our next holiday — these are all the futuristic thoughts that go on in our mind.
Life is never exactly as it’s supposed to be and there’s always another purchase we have to make or event we have to attend.
Living in the future too much is making us stressed. Chill out by spending more time in the present. This doesn’t mean we never think about the future; it just means we spend less time thinking about the future.
We’ll never eliminate stress entirely.
Not all stress is bad. Putting ourselves under a bit of stress can help us grow. The key is not to overdo it.
Have periods where we take time out to escape the stress that comes from a business world that is moving 100 miles an hour thanks to technology.
It’s not about eliminating stress; it’s about managing it better. All we need are a few go-to tools that we can rely on when you feel your stress levels getting out of control.
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