Stress Time Management - What You Need to Know

Do you get stressed about a lack of time to do things? If so, these stress time management tools will help you to deal with your daily stress and put you back in control of your time.

One of the major causes of stress in the 21st century is a lack of time. In a world that is faster paced with less downtime, both stress and time management go hand in hand.

If a lack of time is causing you stress, then enroll in our free one month stress time management course.

Catching a cold – Stress and your immune system

Have you ever noticed that after periods of stress that you may get sick or feel run down? If you have, then stress is having an impact on your immune system.

However, research suggests that stress may not just impact on your immune system, but could have a serious impact on your health, with stress linked to heart disease, cancer. This makes dealing with stress a critically important for your wellbeing.

Going to the source – keep a stress diary to find out what stresses you

The proverb that you can’t fix something until you can identify it is also true of stress time management! A first step in stress time management is to identify what is causing your stress.

A free stress diary can help you to identify the sources of your daily and their effect on you.

Try to remember a time this week when you were stressed?

Perhaps you were stuck in a traffic jam, or giving a talk in front of people, or had too much to do and too little time. You may have felt your heart beating faster, or had difficulty in thinking clearly, or emotional reactions such as frustration and anger. These are all common symptoms of stress.

Did you feel stress as tension in the body, or as racing thoughts and mood swings? A first step to stress time management is identifying the source of your stress and the effect it has on you. Your free stress diary will help you with this.

When B is better than an A – personality and its impact on stress

Our definition of stress is that stress is a perception of demands facing you and the resources to deal with it. Thus, stress is subjective and unique to the individual.

For example, have you ever noticed that some people, no matter what the situation, will view the cup as half full while others will always view the cup as half empty; or that some people always seem impatient, competitive and take a ‘hard-driving’ approach to everything, while others are more relaxed and easy-going.

What I have described here are personality characteristics that are related to optimism and pessimism; and the Type A and Type B behavior pattern. These two types of personality characteristics and their relation to immune functioning, health and the stress response have been researched thoroughly.

Physical methods to reduce stress

• progressive muscle relaxation works on the idea that following the tensing of your muscles, each muscle group can be more deeply relaxed.
• biofeedback enhances the feedback of biological markers such as heart rate, sweat, muscle tension and body temperature. The more aware that you become of these factors the more able you are to control these symptoms of stress.
• breathing is one of the easiest ways to get your stress under control. Deep diaphragmatic breathing (belly breathing) impedes the shallow breathing from the chest – which is often a symptom of stress.

Mental relaxation strategies to reduce stress

• mental imagery to either visualize a calm and soothing experience or the stress flowing out of your body.
• meditation which provides a sense of control and purpose to our lives.
• positive thinking which uses the power of your thoughts to change the way that you perceive a stressful event.
• hypnosis which puts you into a state of relaxed and focused attention, in which your subconscious can be primed for suggestions of change.

Most of us know something about stress because we probably have all experienced it at some stage. If you have ever felt nervous, depressed, upset, pressured, anxious, uptight, or had butterflies in your stomach; then you have experienced stress. However, it is a bit harder to nail down a definition of stress.

If you would like all of your questions about hypnosis answered then this hypnosis site may be beneficial to you.

Meditation is an important form of stress relief which provides a sense of control and purpose. Click here for inspiration and guidance to establish a meditation practice in a your daily life.

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