What's Your Poison?

The pandemic has put us all under extraordinary pressure and this kind of challenging event creates huge stress leaving us feeling miserable and often unwell. We begin to lose motivation to perform even the simplest tasks. Living like this begins to take its toll on our mental well-being. Stress is a normal response to the changing world around us, and it isn't always a bad thing, it can even affect positive change in our lives, but it is how we respond to it that's the issue.

Symptoms can present themselves in many different ways both emotionally and physically. It can be quite a balancing act to maintain healthy stress levels and identifying our stressors is key to protecting ourselves before it becomes too much of a problem.

Taking Back Control

It's been established that good stress management is about building emotional strength, learning to be in control of your situation, having a good social network, and adopting a positive outlook. Feeling out of control is one of the main problems and the very act of taking back control is in itself empowering and is a crucial part of finding a solution.  Setting ourselves goals and challenges such as learning a new language, starting a fitness program, or inventing the next best thing, helps to build confidence, emotional resilience and arms us with the knowledge and power to be pro-active rather than passive.

It's important to give ourselves credit, even for the smallest things, then take a moment to reflect on everything we appreciate already in our lives, this can help us to gain perspective. There are many things in life that are beyond our control, particularly the behavior of others. So instead, decide to focus on the things we can control, such as the way we choose to react to situations. This is part of acceptance, which isn't always easy, but in the long run, it's preferable to the alternative and better for our long-term health.

Invest In Yourself

Major challenges can be re-defined as opportunities for personal growth – it can help to view a stressful situation from a more positive perspective. We need to change negative self-talk to empowering inner dialogue.  By framing our thoughts and words differently, it can help us to make better choices. We are empowered from the inside out and we need to feed a positive mind.

Having a positive outlook enables us to cope better with stress, which ultimately reduces the harmful effects on our health. Taking some time out just for ourselves to prioritize self-care can help us to build our self-esteem. By fully immersing ourselves in a pleasurable pursuit we contribute to our general happiness and encounter less stress and anxiety. We all find these delights in a range of different experiences.  What works for one won't necessarily work for another. So it's important to remember and take notice of all the small things in life that boost our happiness and make us feel good. 

Taking care of our own needs is not a luxury, nurturing ourselves is a necessity. It's important to extend the same kindness and consideration to ourselves as we do to those around us. Self-care is simply realizing that we are important too.