Stress Management Techniques and Self Improvement

Tools that Teach us to Manage Stress

Tools that Teach us to Manage Stress
By David Tomaselli

Nowadays, everyone seems to be stressed. Our days are packed with a long list of tasks, important obligations and tight deadlines, forcing our stress levels to go through the roof.

The first way to fight back against the damaging stressors, that is the sources of your stress, in your life is to identify them and to assess the root causes of each so you can construct a comprehensive, effective stress management plan. One very good way to start doing this is to keep a Stress Diary for the next two weeks.

Rate your Stress Levels
Use your Stress Diary to write down the level of stress you feel regularly (such as every hour or half-hour) throughout the day. Rate this on a scale of scale between 0 and 10, with 0 being least stressed and 10 being highly stressed.

Also, write down what you think is causing you to feel the stress and make a note regarding your overall mood at the time.

Work out the Causes
After carefully recording your stress levels, make a note on what you think may have caused the stress. This may be something such as a meeting or a call with a client or your boss, perhaps bad news, a call, email, etc. Remember it is very important to be honest with yourself here.

Also take note of the physical symptoms that this stress has caused, such as a headache, racing heart, sweaty palms, upset stomach, etc.

How do you react?
Now write down how you reacted to the stress. Was your reaction appropriate and productive, or not?

The idea here is that by keeping a honest and accurate account of the stressors in your life, that is what they are, what caused them and how you reacted to them, you can then identify the stressors in your life. Otherwise, the cause of stress may go unnoticed, which means you never have the opportunity to deal with it, and to control your stress level.

Analyze your stress
After having rated your stress levels for at least two weeks, set aside some time to analyze what you have recorded in your diary.

1. Look at the different stresses you experienced. Pick out the stresses you experienced most frequently, and write them out in order.

2. Make another list with the most unpleasant stressors at the top of the list and the least unpleasant at the bottom.

3. Now, look at your lists. The stressors at the top of each are the most important ones for you to control.

4. Look at the underlying causes you listed and how you feel you handled each. If there are areas where you feel you did not handle the stress as well as you would like, list these now.

5. Look at how you felt when you were under stress. How did it affect your efficiency? How did you behave? How did you feel?

Once you have recorded and analyzed your stress levels and causes, you are ready to manage them. You do this by looking at both the causes and your reactions, and developing your personal stress management plan. A great resource to help you do this is the "Stress Management Masterclass" program from MindTools.com, the internet's leading career skills resource.

With 52 essential stress management tools, this Mind Tools course helps you understand stress and its root causes, and cope with work overload, survive job-related problems, manage performance stress and build defenses against stress, as well as avoid and recover from burn-out.

For more information, go to Mind Tools Masterclass .

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