How to Ditch Stress today: 7 Experts Reveal Their Best Tips

The No.1 question that I get asked all the time is “How can I ditch stress once and for all?”

There are an amazing number of ways we can learn how to ditch stress and on this blog we focus on tai chi, qi gong as well as meditation and mindfulness. These have helped me to completely turn my life around and regain my health along the way

You only have to look at the statistics to see that stress is a massive world wide problem.

According to the HSE ‘The total number of working days lost due to stress, depression or anxiety in 2015/16 in the UK was 11.7 million days.’

‘In 2015/16 stress accounted for 37% of all work related ill health cases and 45% of all working days lost due to ill health.’

When we are consumed by stress it can seem impossible to do anything about it but if we ignore it stress can eventually cause serious health conditions.

So whilst it can be challenging to take the first step in dealing with how we feel it really can be a wonderfully empowering move to experiencing life in a different way.

So where do we start?

What can we do right now?

With this in mind I decided to ask 7 experts the following question:

What is the best tip for people who often feel stressed out?

I’ve invited experts in yoga, life coaching, blogging, mindfulness and minimalism to share their valuable experience in how to manage stress.

You will discover incredibly useful tips that you can use right now. There are some powerful strategies that can help you shift your mindset and other tools to get you started immediately on your stress free journey!

So here you are…

Enjoy……..discover……..

And don’t forget…….

Practise!

Emma Brooke emmabrooke.net

@EmmaBrooke

Emma provides counselling and life coaching for people who have lost themselves along the way somewhere and aren’t entirely sure how to get themselves back again. Emma will gently show you how to avoid living your life through other peoples’ expectations and rediscover what it means to be you.

Work the breath. Becoming conscious and mindful of your breathing triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, turns off your adrenaline and calms you down on a physiological, neurological and psychological level. Notice how you’re breathing, don’t stress over breathing slower or deeper unless it feels OK, but simply become aware of how it feels, whether the inhale is shorter, longer or the same as the exhale, and noticing the tiny pause at the top of the inhale and at the bottom of the exhale. Do this for a couple of minutes at the beginning and end of your day to feel calmer generally, or as and when you need during the day.

 

Courtney Carver bemorewithless.com

@CourtneyCarver

Courtney is the founder of be more with less. Be more with less is about simplifying your life and really living. Living with less creates time and space to discover what really matters. Through de-cluttering, and focusing on the best things instead of all the things, you can create a life with more savings and  no debt, more health and less stress, more space and less stuff, and more joy with less obligation.

Always remember that just because everything is crazy around you, doesn’t mean everything has to be crazy within you.

 

Tania Potter soulsensecoaching.co.za

@TaniaPotter

Tania is a New Insights Certified Life Coach and believes we CAN live in line with our deepest wishes. If any area of your life is not how you want it to be, life coaching gives you the skills to become more confident and in control of your life.

I am one of those people whose mind never stops thinking. The more stress I am under, the worse it gets and 2016 has been a particularly tough year. As a Life Coach I have a wealth of tools and tips I can reel off that are guaranteed to help us de-stress. The problem is, the more pressure we are under, the more we feel we have to ‘do’. Anything that isn’t ‘doing something’,can add to the underlying stress we’re already feeling.

Basically, unless we can get our minds to buy in, not even a massage or meditation can actually help us relax. This tip was suggested to me by a fellow Life Coach ( and yes, Life Coaches have Life Coaches too!). In fact, it’s the only tip that has worked for me in dealing with that slightly overwhelmed, ‘I can’t stop because I have too much to do’, or ‘I can’t sleep because I need to figure this out’, feeling.

PAUSE. The single most powerful word to trick your mind into giving you a break! You don’t have to stop, you don’t have finish what you are doing before taking a break. Simply pause. Here now, for this moment… for this massage… for some sleep… for a walk… or a chat with a friend. Pause. Take a deep breath in. Repeat until your balance is restored.

 

Camilla Hallstrom influencewithcontent.com

@CamillaHallstrom

Camilla is a freelance writer & enthusiastic about productivity and performance optimization.

These days, stress is more of a norm than an exception. And while some stress might be good for getting things done (in that it boosts your adrenaline), a constant feeling of being stressed is anything but fine.

My best tip to stop stress in its tracks is pretty simple… Sleep enough, exercise regularly and eat right. Of course, most of us strive to do just that but have a hard time keeping it all up. The key is to stop overthinking and start by lowering the bar. For example, you don’t have to go to the gym three times a week to exercise enough. Instead, do what’s easiest for you – take a walk or do some yoga at home.”

 

Tee R Sebastien growbrilliant.org

@Tee R Sebastien

In her role as a certified life coach, Tee specialises in helping women reinvent themselves by overcoming low self esteem, changing habits and reaching their ultimate goals in life. Tee is also a writer and the author of The Wayfinder, an inspirational book that shows how dreams do come true when you take action and have faith in yourself.

The first and most important thing that most people forget to do is to realize who they are. Once you acknowledge your needs and what triggers certain behaviors, you will be able to come up with powerful techniques that will help you stay calm in a stressful situation.

Working long hours when there was no need for it and not getting a chance to take a break used to stress me out. I put a great emphasis on prioritization and when things would start to drag because of other people’s ineffectiveness I’d get frustrated and stressed out. But there was no need for it.

Once I analyzed my behaviour and my needs, I learned that I was actually able to easily prevent feeling stressed and help myself stay calm.

 

Vidya Sury vidyasury.com

@VidyaSury

Vidya Sury retired from her corporate career at 33 to focus on her family, and is now living her dream as a writer and editor. With six blogs of her own and published contributions across the web, she writes to collect smiles and donate to charities. Vidya shares stories about all the things she enjoys in life; parenting, mindful living, conversations, coffee, books, food, music, health, DIY, travel, photography and showing her diabetes who’s boss.

Stress is good, but too much is bad, as in the case of anything in life.

I have a little bag of stress relief tricks depending on how much time I can spare to feel better–I say this because stress doesn’t happen with an appointment, and if it strikes in the middle of a working day, I prefer to reach into my cache of stress relievers and pick one based on how stressed I feel and how quickly I can feel better. Let me share my top three stress-busters and you pick the ones you like, or all of them, okay?

Breathe

I know that sounds obvious, and you’ll probably say you cannot survive otherwise–but I am referring to a specific way of breathing. It is the 4-7-8 method and will take 10 minutes, at most. Better to take a time out and do this, than get all worked up. No special equipment needed, and you can do it wherever you like.

Walk

I practice breath walking meditation which is a specific way to walk. It involves focus. Just five minutes will get your balance back! You will need 10 minutes or less.

Practise gratitude

This one is the easiest of all. Stress is usually when something doesn’t go as expected, or when we are worried over something. How about taking a deep breath, setting the timer for 3 minutes, taking a sheet of paper and pen, and writing down all the things you are grateful for? Think of the little things. I like to list my morning coffee, my family, my home, my friends, my work…and so on. You’ll be amazed at what you’ve come up with.

Other stress busters I trust are music, dancing (I’ve so got two left feet, but who cares?), a cup of coffee, a nap, reading, cooking, writing, photography, going through my albums and walking the nostalgia lane…it is an endless list.

I’d love to hear your tips!

 

Ntathu Allen yogainspires.co.uk

@NtathuAllen

Encourages working women to let go of stress and weave more moments of calm into your busy life.

Learning to be aware of how you feel and respond/react to different situations is a learn-able skill. Once you have learnt this skill it becomes easier for you to adopt a simple yoga breathing exercise to reduce stress and evoke a feeling of calm and inner balance.

Regular yoga practice will, in the long term, help you develop and strengthen your resilience to stress. However, when life feels hectic and you are tired and stressed-out, pause what you are doing, take a long steady breath in through the nose and slowly breathe out.

Repeat twice more. This helps to settle your thoughts. Next…if you can, sit down, make sure you feel comfortable…slowly breathe in thought the nostrils for a count of 3 and then softly exhale for a count of 6. Repeat this sequence of breathing in for 3 and out for 6 for 3-5 times. You will instantly feel calm, refreshed and ready to engage with your day in a more positive and peaceful way.

I can’t believe how much amazing content we have in this blog!

I am definitely going to be using these tips the next time I feel stressed.

Let me know which ones you’ve tried and how you got on in the comments box below. It’s always great to hear from you.

Please share this with your friends as you never know who might be needing this right now.

To your happiness

Rob