The Strategist

Four tips to live without stress



11/16/2018 - 14:29



It is impossible to live a normal life or work when you’re stressed: fatigue accumulates, and is about to spill over the edge in the form of tantrums and screams, you work like a robot on weekdays, and want to do nothing on weekends. Mithu Storoni, author of the book "Stress-Proof" believes that this is normal, because our body is not designed for such loads. Compare tasks and cognitive load of people from the 21st, 18th and, let's say, in the 15th centuries (the biological species are the same).



Giuseppe Milo
Giuseppe Milo
The only thing we can do is to protect ourselves. Do not wait for the moment until the alarm system howls (read “until you fall down with the temperature below 40 before the annual report”). And if the brain, our "mission control center", is in proper condition, we can do anything. Here are some tips to help stay in line.

Number 1. Go visit your parents 

Seriously. Oxytocin is sometimes called the hormone of love, because its level rises in the presence of social connections. Our sense of safety follows up. For example, if a group of healthy people is put into a state of stress, then the level of cortisol of those who sit near their best friends will not decrease as dramatically as that of those who re alone.

Previously, you could go to the next house and visit your favorite aunt is you wanted to cheer up. She would hug you, give you tea, and the oxytocin surge would not take long to come. But now parents often live far away, sometimes even on a different continent. The world has changed so much that there is a demand for professional “hugging”. People are willing to pay up to $ 60 an hour, can you imagine?

Summary. The level of oxytocin rises if you feel that you are loved, with a reliable partner, just from a friendly touch in a safe and proper environment, and after a massage (the effect lasts up to several days).

Number 2. Focus on the good

Remember how many times a day you involuntarily give in to the pressure of unpleasant reflections. Getting out of the morning warm bed, you open the curtains - it is raining outside the window. The mood is also spoiled by little annoyances: nuisances come one after another. And the reason is simple. When you open the door for one negative emotion, it will lead the other one as well, and you will be dragged into the center of the negative vortex.

But what will happen if we turn it upside down? Catch a depressing thought, step back from it and quickly switch to something positive or neutral. If this becomes a habit, your world will change.

If you had a meeting with ten clients, and four of them didn’t even smile at you, focus on six good people - then you will have a pleasant memory of this event, and you will forget about the glum fours right away, unless you give up the gloomy thoughts about how awful everything was. During the week, you have five such meetings every day, and it depends only on you who you will feel like on your weekends - an incredibly successful or complete failure.

Number 3. Try meditation

To concentrate (and relax at the same time - this is the wonderful effect of meditation), use the technique of meditation-concentration when necessary. Try to concentrate all attention on a specific object - anything in sight, or a fictional image. During meditation, you should not allow any extraneous thoughts, and if this happens after all, again transfer all attention to the chosen "target".


Number 4. Say No more often

Every morning we open our e-mail client, and dozens of letters fall out like from a Pandora’s box. Most of them require our immediate attention. We are in a panic rush to perform them, choking in an endless stream of pseudo-long and pseudo-important tasks. Running, stressing, without any sense. To avoid pressure and at the same time achieve important goals, you need to learn to say a loud and clear "no" to secondary tasks. It sounds simple and quite logical, but it is a very rare skill. You can achieve anything when you stop doing everything.

Based on “Stress-Proof. The Scientific Solution to Protect Your Brain and Body--and Be More Resilient Every Day” by Mithu Storoni




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