How to Prevent Stress and Turn it to Your Advantag

Stress is often caused by a difficult task that exceeds a person’s abilities.

Low levels of stress keep us in good shape and help us become stronger.
People usually respond emotionally when they receive a result they haven’t expected, and their ability to think rationally is diminished.
When a person is stressed, he is emotional and it’s difficult for him to think rationally.
So, being stressed out doesn’t help a person solve the problem.
Excessive and chronicle stress consumes a lot of our energy and is unproductive and unhealthy.

Unfortunately, most people largely create their own stress by imagining the worst scenario and responding emotionally. Only the person himself can control the way he feels and his emotional responses. We have the ability to change the way we feel about most situations,
and it is usually possible for us to turn stress around and use it to our advantage. We all have this mechanism, but some people discover it sooner than others.

There are both immediate and long-term preventive measures to deal with stress.
People can both choose a more constructive immediate emotional response and gradually increase their resistance to stress.

Here are some suggestions for choosing a smarter or more constructive immediate response:

1.  Take a pause of couple of minutes to think of the best alternative constructive emotional response.
Stop and give your brain some time to adjust to the situation and think over your response.
A quiet minute is usually enough for us to find one or several possible solutions, or even to find a way to turn stress into our advantage.
A person can choose his emotional response if he makes an effort.

2.  Take a 25-30-minute ‘power nap’ in the middle of the day if it is possible. Take a nice walk.
Take a bath or shower. Ask a friend to listen to your ideas and give you his point of view on the situation.

3.  Replace negative words and expressions with positive ones. The words we use define the way we feel and see the world around us.
For example, using the word ‘challenge’ instead of ‘a problem’ refocuses our subconscious mind on looking for opportunities instead of panicking.
Choosing positive words leads to more constructive thoughts and attitude.
The words we use often create our own self-fulfilling prophecies.

4.  Don’t blame other people for the way you feel. No one has the power to control our emotions unless we allow them to. Blaming other people is not constructive. There is no point in getting angry and venting your emotions on someone. Life is much too valuable to spend time feeling miserable, angry, stressed or frustrated. It is not productive and it doesn’t resolve anything. It can even create a vicious cycle and lead more stress.

We are going to face some stressful situations in the future whether we want to or not. Proactively get your mind and body prepared for stressful situations. Increase your adaptability and ability to withstand stress in the future. Here are some ideas:

*  Developing good time-management skills is the best way to reduce stress.

*  Prepare the things you will need the next day before you go to sleep.
Being prepared always helps people be more focused, confident and less stressed. You will be more focused, efficient and productive the next day.

*  Go for a 40 minute walk 3-4 times a week. Exercise in moderation. It improves our blood circulation.

*  Don’t let your stress accumulate. Develop a couple of techniques to get the emotional garbage out of your system.

*  Adjust your expectations. Unrealistically high expectations cause stress.

*  Keep improving your communication skills. They often help prevent stressful situations, because miscommunication often leads to stressful situations.

*  Keep developing the habit of consciously modifying your behavior when you need to.

*  Proactively turn your opponents into partners and allies. Find creative way to accomplish that. It will allow you to avoid stressful situations.

The above measures help develop a habit of staying calm and keeping your cool in a stressful situation. They help you become more tolerant and less sensitive to stress factors.

Guard your integrity and don’t compromise it. On the other hand, make sure you have really good reasons to fight for before you decide to go to war. Both sides often lose in a war. Moreover, at all cost try to avoid a war if you don’t have enough resources to win it.
What if you try to turn into a chameleon for some time? Try to turn your opponent into a partner or maybe even decide to lose a battle to win the war.


Vocabulary

to prevent  -  предотвращать
advantage  -  преимущество
to turn something into your advantage  -  превратить что-то в свое преимущество
to cause  -  вызывать
to exceed  -  превышать
ability  -  способность
to be in good shape  -  быть в хорошей форме
to respond  -  реагировать
to expect  -  ожидать
excessive  -  избыточный
to consume  -  потреблять
to a considerable extent  -  в значительной степени
the worst  -  самый худший
except  -  за исключением
preventive  -  предупредительный
measure  -  мера
response  -  реакция
increase  -  увеличение
resistance  -  сопротивление

Alex Kritskiy, a private English teacher, Ph.D., 38-067-391-76-62