Stress still plays a major role in our society and is the cause of many physical complaints. We are lived and reducing or reducing stress is more than once the advice of a professional. Even though the sensitivity to stress is partly due to a person's character, the fact is that we work extremely hard in the Netherlands. And it is also a fact that the stress hormone cortisol plays an actual role in the stress someone feels.
Also the fear of missing out or FOMO plays tricks on us. In fact, we want everything at once, and that's not possible. That creates stress. And then it's a matter of prioritizing and going through the tips below to lower the stress if you suffer from it! Also read our blog about December stress if that applies to you.
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First of all, it is good to realize that stress is subject to change. Stress and the stress hormone cortisol are actually meant to trigger a state of alertness. To function better and withstand danger or risk well. But slowly stress seems to change from a temporary and intense emotion to a chronic variant. Do you suffer from stress? Then you can reduce your stress by actively working with the tips below. If you can't get rid of it with the tips below, read more about CBD oil , which I've written about before!
In a Volkskrant Magazine was an article by a correspondent in Iran, who could not get used to the slow pace of the country. As a Dutchman, he is used to getting everything out of a day and spending every hour as best as possible. In Iran, people don't feel that time pressure, he says. They can let their work fall out of their hands and say:'that will come again tomorrow'. The cynical reader will now say 'yes, that's why things are going a lot better in the Netherlands than in Iran'. But there are many more countries, usually located further south than the Netherlands, where time pressure is considered complete nonsense.
Now you don't have to see this in black and white of course, but where you can let the time pressure celebrate… do it!
Feeling time pressure is related to the urge to control. There are simply countless things that a person has no control over. We tend to overestimate ourselves in that regard. Tell yourself that control is an illusion, apply it and you will look at life a lot more relaxed. This lowers your cortisol level and you have less stress to lower.
If it all becomes too much for you and you only start to worry, you can agree to do this at regular intervals. Let go of all negative emotions for 15 minutes. Fear, sadness and anger are weight, and often irrational. You can exhaust these emotions. With a fixed moment of worry you bring them back to the background. Spend the rest of your day doing constructive things. Especially with sensitive, intelligent people, the brain behaves like a lazy boy:when it is bored, it starts looking for something bad.
Lunch is important, even sacred in some cultures. That half hour break in the Netherlands makes no sense. Of course you want to go home on time and you prefer to push your bums inside behind the computer. But that makes lunch a necessary evil. It is important to enjoy it and stretch your legs afterwards. Ideally, you should take an hour and a half to reduce your work stress † The shops used to close between 12:00 and 13:30, why not anymore? What's so important that we rush our lunch? You can easily reduce your stress by consciously eating longer lunches. Not once, but structurally if possible.
After half an hour of not looking at your smartphone, you see the following things:
– An email from Uncle Kees full of spelling mistakes
– A message in the football team's WhatsApp group:'Training from tomorrow, 20:00. Fancy!'
– 33 facebook notifications:Bibi and 12 others like your photo, Julia likes the page 'How to learn breading', Menno invited you to an event and so on.
– push message from the NOS:'Bangladesh flooding', 'frost predicted', 'Trump still wears a wig'
It's largely superfluous nonsense for your brain to process. There are people who are switching to the good old Nokia 3310:only texting and calling. “Oh how wonderful!” many smartphone owners respond when they hear that. It's a mystery why they don't just keep dragging that squeaking and vibrating block on their leg with them, but also buy the latest model every year.
You can already feel it coming. A smartphone does not contribute to reducing stress. In fact, your stress level will immediately decrease if you throw out those unnecessary social media!
The average of more than 700 hours per year that we spend on our smartphone are better spent. A hobby gives peace of mind and therefore immediately reduces stress. That varies from doing jigsaw puzzles (very zen ) or keeping a vegetable garden to playing an instrument. If you focus on something that suits you, you are less inclined to check for something interesting on twitter. The world doesn't exist for a while if you do something creative † When you are knitting, reading a wonderful book, tinkering with an old scooter or looking for furniture in a thrift store.
Ambition is often based on the fear of not meeting the expectations of others. When you were little, did you want to be a professional football player or boss of the world? Now you realize that all that responsibility only brings stress. There's nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop , a certain artist once sang:the higher you get on the ladder, the more work you have to deal with. If not on paper, then in your head.
Therefore, you should replace ambition with dreams. How, with whom and where do you think you will become happy? We are all chuckling every week to I'm leaving , but those people are chasing their dream. They simply do what they feel like. Does your work pay well, but it doesn't make you happy? Better go do something else yesterday than today, time for a career switch † Here or somewhere else. Surely you weren't born to spend the majority of your life the boss's time to spend?
For example, I notice that I have gone through various stages of stress since I started working for myself. From tension in the beginning and a lot of stress with the web shops to now a wonderful working week with little stress. While I still have to make sure that there is money in the account every month to live on. But if you can do what you like, you will by definition suffer less from stress. I also make my own choices. Do I want to paint a door during the day or go for a nice long walk with the dog? Then I do that, and that really works to lower stress.
During a meeting, for example, ask yourself:what are we all doing together? What are we concerned about? The answer is often too silly to be true. Landing an important customer, launching a successful marketing campaign… You can't help but laugh. Do you think it's worth all that stress? New.
No job or business is sacred, your well-being is. Comedian and great thinker Theo Maassen summed it up nicely. An installer said he should always wipe the tiles after taking a shower, otherwise limescale could build up. Maassen had no intention of doing this. "Well, there may be limescale, but otherwise I have to remove those tiles every time."
Of course you know that yoga is good for reducing and lowering your stress, but you also know why Yoga is even more good for you † Take a look!
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