Stress Management Skills
Making Your Stress Productive

Do you have the stress management skills in preventing your everyday stress from piling on new problems?  Are you using stress as a motivation for problem solving?  In a perfect world, the stress you experience can be used as inspiration—helping you strive to find answers or perform tasks better.  But in reality, we know that too often the stress you experience just creates more problems to your already long list of life challenges.

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Due to technology improvements and business globalization there is a heightened sense of competition and a feeling that you need to do more in less time.  Communication between people is available 24/7.  How are you adapting to these challenges?  Here are some strategies to use the stress in your life as an energizing boost for productive results.

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What stress management skills help you transform your stressors into an energy boost?

• Trust yourself  to handle the situation.  You are more resilient than you think.  You are more capable than you give yourself credit.  Use your gut reactions and focus on problem solutions available.
•  Keep your mind focused in the now.  Not the past or future.  The past events are over and cannot be changed.  The future has not occurred and no amount of worrying is going to change the outcome.  It is best to enjoy today and focus on what is happening right now and make certain that you are giving your complete attention to these tasks you can control in the present.
• Enjoy the moment—live with the challenge.  Breathe and reflect on your options.  Develop an action plan that is clearly constructed with mental clarity.  By attending to details of your action plan, you have more control over following the plan to a successful conclusion, knowing what to expect along the way.  Such careful planning to problem solving is a great stress management skill.  The stress may not be avoided but handled in a productive way.
  

What stress management skills help you block the energy drain that stressors can cause?

• Build in necessary sleep hours.  Taking care of your body’s ability to revive itself after a long and stressful day is an important way of restoring much needed energy levels for handling the next challenge.
• Renew your energy depletion.  Take a brisk walk and enjoy a quick nutritious meal.  You know that your body requires exercise and healthy foods to replenish itself, but often such important habits are ignored during stressful times.  Don’t allow stress to deplete your body’s ability to ward off illnesses, or stay mentally alert and physically strong.  Taking time for a brisk walk is also a wonderful way of relieving stress build-up that can cause mental and physical fatigue.
• Put your work away at the end of your work day.  A clutter-free desk in the morning gives a sense of renewal.  Start each day fresh without reminders from yesterday’s chaotic events.  Use a desk organizing system to store everything in its place where it can be found when needed but reduces the ability for piles of papers to become a distraction from the task at hand.
• Choose your thoughts.  Limit the negative voice.  Stop complaining and start a gratitude list.  If that little voice within your head starts complaining or starts doubting your ability to accomplish a current task, stop the negative banter and think of something else.  Be your own best friend and learn to believe in yourself.  Remember, trust yourself to handle the situation.

Stress management skills can not eliminate all of life's stressors, and as you have read, many times stress can provide an opportunity to motivate you and help you find creative solutions.  Look at stress in your life as a temporary inconvenience that will always evolve but does not have to be a barrier to your success.

Stress Management for Women

How Do Women Handle Stress?

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