10 Easy Tips To Help You Reduce Stress And Anxiety

If you’re like me in anyway you sometimes get desperate for a solution to your nervous problem.  After all anxiety and stress can pile on the mental and phyiscal pain until all we want is to make it all stop, like now.  This of course is tricky business but after a decade of struggling with this I’ve learned that in order to achieve more peace in your life you have to do things, and repeat them often.  Here are ten ways to do just that.

1. Identify Your Anxiety Triggers: We all have a set of things, people, places, or situations that set off our anxiety.  Find out what your triggers are then when your not anxious think about why these things set you off.  Take the time to analyze the sources of your anxiety and mull it over.  This will take away the mystery and reduce the fear of your anxiety triggers.

2. Stop Adding Anxiety To Your Life: If you smoke, do drugs, eat poorly, behave anti-socially, etc then you are part of the problem.  Don’t hurt yourself and also expect good things to happen at the same time.  Remove all the unhealthy things from your life that you do frequently and you will see a positive change.

3. Practice Stress Management: We sometimes blame all of our problems on anxiety, but the reality is that we can be very proactive in reducing our anxiety by simply making an effort to reduce stress period.  Stress management includes things like exercising, eating right, not consuming caffeine, meditating, and sleeping right.

4. Make Time For Yourself: This doesn’t mean sitting in front of the tube either.  Set aside some time for a hobby or activity that you enjoy that will engage your mind and allow you to have fun at the same time.  This can include simple things like listening to music, writing a journal, gardening, talking to friends, hiking, etc.

5. Accept: This one is perhaps the hardest to do.  One of the big things that has killed me over the years is the lack of control that I feel I have over myself from time to time.  The bottom line is that we can’t always be in control and letting go will give you a chance to rest.

6. Avoid Unnecessary Stress: If there is a particular person or activity that you know will stress you out AND you can easily avoid it then avoid it. This doesn’t mean that you should not expose yourself to things you fear – it’s just to say that if your not feeling well don’t push it.

7. Don’t Blow Things Out Of proportion: Keep things in perspective.  We may not all be hypochondriacs but most of us are probably borderline alarmist.  That is something goes even a little sideways and we get very afraid and worried.  It’s hard, but always look at things with a logical eye.  Then once you find some peace in that logical thought exploit the hell out of it.  Repeat it over and over if you have to – just stay grounded in what can actually happen and not what you imagine might happen.

8. Stay Connected To Other People: Anxiety tends to make us want to hide from the world, but this is the opposite of what you should do.  Surround yourself with those you love and trust and make a serious effort to spend time with them.  It will not only distract you but help your loved ones help you.

9. Educate Yourself: It’s so cliche, so cliche, but knowledge is power.  With it you can better understand yourself, your situation, treatment options, your mind, and your life so much better.  This will lead to more confidence, reassurance, and ultimately more peace of mind.

10. Anxiety Does Not Kill: Try to internalize this message.  Make it a mantra, an affirmation, something always in your mind.  Because when you truly accept this anxiety will still bother you to no end, but at least you won’t have to stop what your doing, or worse yet not do certain things just because it’s there.

I know that you already know this, you just have to believe it.