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Do you find yourself spending most of your life doing things you must do: things for other people, things for your job, things to keep your life running, things, things, things? How many of these things are done to bring a smile to your face and enjoyment to your life? Or, put another way, how much of your daily life is actually fun?
If you're like most people these days, you're overworked and overly stressed. People are working longer hours, and are needing to remain more focused as they deal with downsizing and an economic crunch that's being tangibly felt. And feeling overworked can take a heavy toll and lead to burnout. (Burnout can be brought on by a combination of long work hours, unpredictable job requirements, and a few other burnout risk factors that many people are experiencing with increasing frequency these days.)
Partially as a way to stave off burnout, and partially as a means to relieve general stress and make life more enjoyable and meaningful, I recommend that we all celebrate 'National Take Back Your Time Week' by culling our schedules, cutting out some unnecessary drudgery, and replacing it not with more unnecessary drudgery or reruns on t.v., but with revitalizing, life-affirming, or just plain fun activities that will soothe our souls and bring us more smiles. (See this related post for fun ideas.)
"That sounds great, Elizabeth, but where do we begin?" you may ask. This is the difficult part of the equation, of course, which often keeps people from making changes in their lives. Don't let this hurdle discourage you! Sometimes it's easy to see what time drains can be plugged--if you're watching several hours of television per night and getting no exercise, an obvious change can be made there. Sometimes time can be created by being more efficient in your everyday activities--taking shortcuts while fixing meals, or multi-tasking (but not too much).
Other times, difficult decisions must be made and certain activities must be dropped to make enough space for you to have a life-affirming hobby or maintain a healthy habit--ingredients for a stress relieving lifestyle. This can be a challenge, akin to de-cluttering your lifestyle; however, it's important to realize that when you don't make time for self-nurturing and just plain fun in your life, you're trading away the enjoyable life that you could have for a life that drains you without replenishing your emotional energy. You're choosing more stress, and perhaps the negative effects that come with chronic stress. When you think of it that way, it may be easier to cut out enough 'have to' activities in your schedule to add a few 'want to' activities.
The following articles can help you carve out some space in your schedule--to 'Take Back Your Time'!--so you can have more room for fun and stress relief in your life:
What are your best time management tips? How might you free up 30 minutes or two hours? Put your best ideas here in the comments! Take Back Your Time! originally appeared on About.com Stress Management on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 03:49:49.
Conversely, a healthy sex life can be a nice buffer against the stresses of the world, and can bring benefits that are good for health, like lowered blood pressure. The trick is to take a proactive stance--manage stress to the point that you can 'get your groove back,' and then use a healthy sex life as the enjoyable stress reliever it can potentially be!
If you're not having as much fun in the bedroom as you'd like, fear not. The following sex-and-stress resources can help you to better understand the link between stress and sex, identify how the two may be impacting each other in your life, and do what you can to reduce stress and increase your libido, maintaining a healthy, enjoyable sex life. Have fun!
The Links Between Sex and Stress
How Stress Can Lead to Low Libido
How to Get In The Mood When You're Too Stressed For Sex Do you find that stress is harming your sex life? Or is sex your greatest stress reliever? Talk about it in the comments or on Facebook. Like this post? Want to use it to start a discussion with your friends? Pass it on! Read More Relationship Research for Stress Relief
Sex, Stress, and Your Life: Need A Change? originally appeared on About.com Stress Management on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 01:38:21.
New research out of Dartmouth College reinforces this principle in relation to job stress. In two different experiments, researchers studied how people respond when they go against the grain at work, and are thus more noticed and scrutinized. For many, being the focus of attention at work can be a stressful experience, but this isn't universally true. What factors affect whether being a standout is stressful or affirming?
Perhaps not surprisingly, the level of resources people had to do a good job had a major impact on whether or not they were stressed when finding themselves the center of attention at work. Researchers deduced that the key ingredient here is whether subjects felt threatened, or challenged.
This is a key distinction, because it's perceived threat that triggers the stress response--not necessarily actual danger. Once the fight-or-flight response is triggered, a cascade of changes occur in the body, and if this happens often enough to constitute chronic stress, your health can be affected in ways both minor and major.
In contrast, a challenge can create eustress--the type of stress that makes you feel vital and alive. Challenges at work can stir creative juices and give you a reason to look forward to going to work in the morning.
While you can't always control what type of experiences you encounter, you can make a conscious decision to try to view situations as challenges instead of threats as much as possible. Viewing something as a challenge automatically gets you looking for solutions, rather than getting buried in feelings of stress.
How do you get into the "challenge, not threat" point of view? Here are a few resources to get you started:
How To Be More Emotionally Resilient
Tips On Maintaining a Sense of Humor
Oh, yeah; and it never hurts to be prepared!
Source: Like this post? Want to use it to start a discussion with your friends? Pass it on!
Ongoing Stress Reduction Resources - Follow Me on Twitter - Subscribe to the Newsletter
Threat Vs. Challenge originally appeared on About.com Stress Management on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 at 03:47:31. |
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