Stress Less and Live More

Stress management starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Your true sources of stress aren’t always obvious, and it’s all too easy to overlook your own stress-inducing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Sure, you may know that you’re constantly worried about work deadlines. But maybe it’s your procrastination, rather than the actual job demands, that leads to deadline stress.

To identify your true sources of stress, look closely at your habits, attitude, and excuses:

• Do you explain away stress as temporary (“I just have a million things going on right now”) even though you can’t remember the last time you took a breather?

• Do you define stress as an integral part of your work or home life (“Things are always crazy around here”) or as a part of your personality (“I have a lot of nervous energy, that’s all”).

• Do you blame your stress on other people or outside events, or view it as entirely normal and unexceptional?

Until you accept responsibility for the role you play in creating or maintaining it, your stress level will remain outside your control.

A stress journal can help you identify the regular stressors in your life and the way you deal with them. Each time you feel stressed; keep track of it in your journal. As you keep a daily log, you will begin to see patterns and common themes. Write down:

• What caused your stress (make a guess if you’re unsure)

• How you felt, both physically and emotionally

• How you acted in response

• What you did to make yourself feel better

Think about the ways you currently manage and cope with stress in your life. Your stress journal can help you identify them. Are your coping strategies healthy or unhealthy, helpful or unproductive? Unfortunately, many people cope with stress in ways that compound the problem.

Some symptoms of stress:

• Smoking

• Drinking too much

• Overeating or under eating

• Zoning out for hours in front of the TV or computer

• Withdrawing from friends, family, and activities • Using pills or drugs to relax

• Sleeping too much

• Procrastinating

• Filling up every minute of the day to avoid facing problems

• Taking out your stress on others (lashing out, angry outbursts, physical violence)

Get Plenty of Sleep

You must not overlook the connection between the amount of sleep you get and your overall exercise performance. When you are short on sleep, it’s quite typical to find yourself struggling to maintain the usual level of exercise that you normally would tolerate quite well.

In addition to this, since sleep is the primary time the body recovers from exercise and stress, it’s also when you will be rebuilding your torn muscle tissues. Without this recovery time, you’re going to go into your next exercise session, a work meeting, and/or you demanding life at a disadvantage; which will without question of a doubt, slow you down.

So make sure you’re getting your 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Not only are you going to feel better, think clearer, and be much stronger when it comes to battling those food cravings that are so common with fat loss diets, but you’ll also really be helping promote better long-term health as well.

Raise Those Endorphins

Part of why we eat is to get rid of bad feelings, and pleasures can counteract that. Ways to get that natural high? Exercise, of course. Find a hobby that engages you. Listen to music you love, and dance around your living room. Take a class. Eat spicy foods. Do something thrilling. Laugh and live your best life!

Remember, not all cycles have to be vicious. Research shows that when you exercise, the better you sleep, which can make you less hungry. Also, the more you sleep and exercise, the better your mood and stress levels may be, so you’re less likely to get the neurochemical cues that might lead you to overeat. And all these steps may lead you toward feeling more whole.

Believe in Yourself

If things go wrong don’t panic. Learning new habits takes time. Think back to when you learned to ride a bike. No-one expected you to do it the first time. You no doubt fell off a lot and needed picking up, with help along the way. Step by step you took control of that bike and learned how to keep it on course.

How you think, affects how you feel, and in turn the actions you take. Believe in yourself every day. Focus on what you want – being fitter, healthier – rather than how unfit you are. Setting realistic goals and having positive expectations will make all the difference. It doesn't matter what you do every once in awhile, but what you do every day. Try to focus day by day and make a commitment to yourself. Believe in yourself and visualize yourself at your end goal, what it feels like. You are an amazing beautiful person with the ability to make any changes in your life. "You've got this!"

Spiritual Well-being “The non physical dimension of our lives”

Get out of your own way, step back from the details and think about the whole. Our Spiritual wellbeing can come from living in the present moment and practicing mindfulness or it may come from reflecting on our past. The point is, is spiritual wellbeing is about finding meaning and purpose in our life and our place in the greater universe. Exploring our unique spirituality can help us choose actions that are consistent with our personal beliefs and values. Reconciling our actions with our beliefs can be central to the development of spiritual well-being, among many other facets of our life.

Spiritual well-being can have a dramatic impact on various aspects of our well-being, particularly with respect to finding overall peace, harmony, and happiness with our life and surroundings.

Imbalance in spiritual well-being can affect our sense of purpose and meaning in the world, which carries emotional, physical, social, and possibly even financial implications. Though spirituality may play a more important role for some than for others, becoming aware of how spirituality weaves into your unique well-being wheel can be helpful in developing an integrated, holistic, and balanced self.

Here are some ways to help improve your spiritual health:

• Self Love and Self Care.

• Belief in yourself.

• Be quiet. Take time for yourself every day, even if it’s just before you go to sleep, or when you’re driving home.

• Be open. Spiritual experiences can happen anywhere at any time.

• Practice being non-judgmental and having an open mind.

• Be receptive to pain or times of sorrow. It is often in these times when we discover how spirituality can help us cope.

• Practice forgiveness.

• Be kind.

• Be compassionate.

• Pray and meditate.

• Live joyfully.

Be well my friends,

From my heart to your heart, God Bless, Coach, Tina XO