Easy Ways to Reduce Stress

The topic of stress gets most people’s attention and for good reason. More and more people are complaining about their stress. They say it comes from their long commutes to and from work, difficult team members, a bad boss, long hours, problems at home and so on. But notice that all the above is pointing to a belief that stress comes from external events and situations.

Where does stress really come from? I’m not talking about positive stress (eustress) that moves us into action. I’m talking about the kind of stress that drains our physical and emotional energy and leaves us feeling frustrated, stuck, irritable and even angry. Where does that kind of stress come from?

You feel stress when the demands of life and work exceed your resources:

If you can lift a fifty pound weight and believe there would be a benefit to you doing so, you’d be motivated to do it, not stressed out. If you need to work a twelve hour day for two weeks in a row and you love your work and believe the extra work load will benefit you, you’d be fine. However, if you are being asked to do something you see little to no benefit in and feel like you can’t say “No,” most people would create a lot of stress over that.

In the last situation, you would be creating unnecessary stress—the situation itself wouldn’t be creating it. However, you would be doing it unintentionally and probably wouldn’t know you were doing it. You would think it’s the other person who asked you to do something you didn’t want to do. You might resent them and blame them because they’re “too pushy.” So you feel a lot of stress because you lack the resources to deal with that person. That’s something you can change (by gaining more resources) and end your stress.

You feel stress when you make things worse than they are:

If that sounds harsh, you can relax—we’ve all been guilty of making things worse than they are. The question is, “Are you one of the few who decides to learn how to keep things in perspective?” The challenge is that when we “awfulize” or “catrastophize” a situation we believe our perspective is just fine, thank you. We often don’t appreciate someone questioning our story of how bad something is and we can easily shut them out.

The problem is that in doing so we shut the stress in as well. One of the main reasons we feel a situation is worse than it is is because we don’t believe we can handle it—it’s just too much for us. However, when we accept no one is coming to the rescue and decide to learn how to handle it better we, in effect, end much of our stress.

You feel stress when you ask the wrong questions: 

It takes practice to learn to take the more challenging situations and ask questions that will give you positive energy and end the stress. Most of us have learned to blame outside sources or people when we’re going through a tough time. To end your stress, you have to look inside and ask, “What can I do to make this better?” 

Your challenging situation might not be your fault, but it’s always your responsibility (and opportunity) to ask questions such as, “What can I do to make this better?” That will give you dramatically different answers than asking the question, “Why is this happening to me? Learn to make your default questions “Who can help me with this?” or “How can I learn to deal with this more effectively?” The wrong questions lead to more stress but more empowering questions can enable you to end your stress. 

- Alan Allard, Executive Coach