stress management
Stress is the “psychological, physiological and behavioural response by an individual when they perceive a lack of equilibrium between the demands placed upon them and their ability to meet those demands, which, over a period of time, leads to ill-health”
- Palmer
Stress can be a positive thing, keeping us alert, motivated and ready to avoid danger. This is called eustress. Eustress motivates people to work hard, improve their performance and reach their goals, even in the face of challenges. In this case, the energy you need is provided. Stress becomes a problem when stressors continue without relief or periods of relaxation. This is called distress. Frequent, intense or chronic stress is toxic to the body and brain. In distress, the energy you need to face the situation is excessive or unusable.
To make sure you can stay in your powerzone (eustress), time to recover is essential.
Stress mechanisms
The videos below give more information on how our bodies' stress mechanisms work.
The video on the left gives more information on how our body responds to stress. The one in the middle gives more insight in experiencing stress and how people experience stress differently. It also has some tips and tricks on how to handle stress. The video on the right gives more information on how chronic stress affects our brain and body and how it might affect our life in different ways.
The videos will open in a new tab.
Exercise: Get to know your stress signals
How is your body reacting to stress? Do you know your stress signals? And do you know when it's time to slow down and tune in with yourself?
Download the document below to get to know your stress reactions better. This way you will be able to recognize it sooner when your body is experiencing stress and when you need to slow down.
Heart coherence training
Learn more about heart coherence training by scrolling through the magazine below
(it gets bigger when you click on it).
TIP: Online you find a lot of videos that can guide you through a heart coherence training
Rational Emotive Therapy - RET
Often, it's not the situation itself that causes stress or undesirable feelings, but our thoughts about the situation that decide how we are feeling.
RET initially stood for "Rational Emotive Therapy", later it changed to "Rational Effectivity Training". The RET method focuses on making you aware of your thoughts and beliefs. It's essential to realize that they are the main cause of stress/other undesirable feelings in order to be able to change these feelings.
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tips to manage your stress
Some of these tips might seem obvious to you, but think about it for a second and ask yourself "am I really applying this"?
Recognizing what causes you stress is an important part of stress management. Make the analysis. What is going on in your life? What gives you an unpleasant feeling? What takes a lot of your energy? What causes stress? See if you can minimize or remove your stressors. The exercise above (exercise: get to know your stress signals) will help you to get a better insight in your stressors.
You shouldn't be doing AND this AND this AND this AND this ... Keep your to do list short and clear. And remember, multitasking does not work. If you focus on one task at a time, you will work more effectively, perform better and have less stress. The sentence "Should I do this right now" will help you (more info on this in the previous section)
We have to be attentive on what we can and can't control. Sometimes we're stressing and getting worked up about things we can't control ourselves. If it's not something we can control or change ourselves, then we shouldn't worry about it either.
Don't make your planning too tight. You'll only get stressed when you don't make it. Build in some extra time and enjoy the moment when you finish a task. Believe me you will feel good.
Don't try to squeeze everything in. If it's too much, just tell your colleague, manager, friend, family member. No one will benefit from it if you are over-stressed and the risk you'll have to disappoint someone just gets higher.
Make sure to build in some time to relax after a stressful period. Recovery is key. Tune in with yourself and slow down your pace of life. Take a look at our first topic that was released, relaxation, to get some inspiration and ideas on how to start relaxing.
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Be in the moment. Enjoy nature during a walk or bike ride, hear the birds sing, play with your pet and see how happy it makes them, call a friend,...
Everyone knows that it is important to move your body and eat healthy and unprocessed foods to nourish your body, but these are often the first things that will suffer when you're busy. These topics will be discussed more into detail later in the resilience calendar.
Research has shown that positive self-talk enhances your performance and general well-being. Optimists have a better quality of life. You don't have to be chanting mantras constantly but telling yourself things like: “I don’t feel too great today, but things could be worse.” might help to have a more positive view on the rest of your day.
A lot of stress is caused by feelings and thoughts about a situation more than by the actual situation itself. You can read more about it in the section about "RET" (= rational effectivity training)
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time management
Studies have shown that incorporating time management skills can help to prevent stress, decrease the perceived stress and increase the perceived control of time. Click on the titles to get more information and practical tips on how to implement it.
Click on the titles to get more information and practical tips
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Rethinking Stress
How to rethink stress and develop a positive stress mindset
Modupe Akinola is an Associate Professor of Management at Colombia business school. Her research focuses on stress.
She tells you more on rethinking stress and answers some very interesting questions in the video below where she had an open discussion with dr. Mark Williamson at an Action for Happiness event.
Some key take aways
Stress gives you energy to run from life threatening things. You need those hormones to survive. So, stress wasn’t always a bad thing, the problem today is that we are not shutting it off. You might ask yourself how can we learn to turn this off? It’s your mindset that does it all and lucky for you: you can change your mindset. The way you think about stress can make it less of a burden and the way you approach it can change how you experience it.
The stress enhancing mindset sees the potential in stress to have a positive impact. Make stress work for you, not against you!
Taking care of burnout
Click on the image below to download the booklet on taking care of burnout
