Life can sometimes throw you curveballs, and there are things that we cannot control. While we cannot control incoming stress, we can control how we respond to them through skill-building and learning to respond in healthier ways. To live a happy and healthy life, you need to develop healthy coping mechanisms and these strategies may be a good place to start.
Balanced Diet
Managing and processing stress can take an invisible, but a hefty toll on the body. Ensuring that you have a balanced diet full of nutrients can help you as you navigate your stressors; however, there are also times that your diet alone won’t suffice. Supplements and vitamins can help you fill in the gaps from deficiencies. Products that provide you with detailed information and reviews like the information available for thrive side effects can be useful as you make your decision. Make sure that your body has the fuel and energy it needs to process these challenges.
Basic Needs
When life gets stressful, particularly when it feels like there is too much to do, we can avoid managing our basic human needs. While it may feel like there is too little time and too much to do, we still need to manage our body’s basic needs. Your emotional hurdles can feel that much more challenging when your body is ill-prepared.
Exercise
Physical activity is another area of managing your wellness that will play a key role in staying healthy. By getting your body moving and heart rate up, you can release endorphins which play a natural role in managing your emotions. Introducing exercise into your life can benefit both your mental and physical health, leaving you in a more balanced state to deal with any tension that arises.
Overly Indulgent Behaviors
While it can feel tempting to participate in overly indulgent behaviors like overeating, drinking alcohol or oversleeping during times of high tension, these aren’t always the most useful strategies. It can feel comforting at the moment, these types of indulgent behaviors can leave you feeling sluggish, depleted and unsatisfied, only offering short-term relief. It is not to say that you can never enjoy a bit of indulgent behavior, but these offer little help when managing stress.
Mental Resilience
Resilience is a popular topic in conversations around managing stress, and focusing on yours can be truly beneficial. Much like how our bodies need training, so do our minds. If you are open to building a meditation or mindfulness practice into your life, you can learn to sit with the discomfort and tension of your challenges. Finding ways to become more mentally resilient will help you manage stress and forge a more positive path.
Asking for Help
In a society that is so focused on individual success and the perception of perfection, we may find ourselves feeling uninclined to ask for help; however, support is critical to managing stress. Having a core support system, sharing your story with others and professional support can help you navigate the tension and pressure of life more smoothly. Not only can having another opinion be useful, but you can also have someone to share the burden with, a sounding board for problem-solving and someone to give advice and help.
Strategy Evaluation
Many of us use a one size fits all approach to coping, but not every coping mechanism works for every person. You need to find coping mechanisms that work best for you and this means evaluating how helpful the strategies are in your life. There could be a variety of reasons why your strategies are not a good fit, but this requires some exploration and self-reflection. Once you find a few methods that work for you, practice those often and learn more about them to ensure that you are equipped and ready for anything life has to throw your way.
There are times that life can be hard. While you will certainly encounter challenges, you also can equip yourself to deal with these difficulties. You can avoid feeling completely helpless in situations of increased pressure and hardship by taking time to find the right coping mechanisms that can help you find a better balance and a more manageable existence.