Easy Solutions to Help You Manage Stress

By Ruth Ann Monti –

Life, as we know it, is full of stress. Some stress is good for us, while other stress just saps our energy.

Stress can be a wakeup call to force us to take action. A stern talk from the doctor can make us change our diets to avoid diabetes or finally stop smoking. Completing a tax return on our own—quite a learning experience for many—can make us more careful about documenting our finances.

Some Stress is Good for You

Some stress is healthy for us. Here are five types of good stress, according to “Psychology Today:”

1. Travel, which expands creativity, helps us relax, and quite literally clears our minds to sharpen our problem-solving abilities
2. Falling in love, which stimulates neuron growth
3. Graded exposure to things that make you anxious ease that anxiety
4. Changes
5. Beginning something new

Numbers three, four and five can also bring relief from the bad kinds of stress and won’t necessarily cost anything. As David Bowie sang years ago, “turn and face the strange” (often misquoted as “strain”) to get out of a funk. It’s good advice.

Stress Management in Baby Steps

Just about every source that discusses stress management mentions exercise. Sure, it’s good advice but difficult for people consumed with financial worries. Others who are unemployed or underemployed may believe if they are awake every moment should be devoted to working or finding work. This, of course, is a terribly stressful way to live.

Santa Clara University came up with activities—mental as well as physical—that can help people get started on managing stress and rebalancing their lives. They reflect those three anti-stressors, and are great first steps to combine with physical activities:

• Reward yourself by planning leisure activities. Active ones are the best type. If you watching TV de-stresses you, add in some exercise with it. It can be lifting heavy books, jumping jacks, sit ups—anything that moves body parts.
• Control your environment by controlling who is around you. If you can’t stand talking to people, go to a dog park where you can just watch and enjoy.
• Organize yourself. Go through your clothing and kitchenware and find what you can donate; giving is actually a great stress reliever.

Organization can be tough, but it can also clear your head much like travel. Once your ego is built up a bit, take some organizational action on your finances:

• Gather all of your debt information and list it on a spreadsheet so you can track each payment you make. This lets you see results.
• Put some muscle behind your money. Register all of your accounts with a financial alert system. Read up on how to protect the money you have—knowledge is empowerment.
• Put password protection on all of your online accounts—financial, email and social. Subscribe to a password generating tool that creates new passwords for you as often as you wish.

Put Financial Worries in Perspective

Money-related stress can affect just about everything in our lives. For many people, financial stress is very real and scary. But it’s not the amount of money a person owes that can stress him or her into depression or even health problems; it’s how much worry is put into it, according to WebMD. Constructive action is healthier, advises Kelly McGonigal, PhD, a Stanford psychologists and researcher:

• Put things into perspective. Making lifestyle changes is rarely deadly.
• Keep a journal where you list what worries you and potential solutions

Remember, action is a powerful stress reliever.

Ruth Ann Monti provides copywriting and content development for all things webby. Her interests include content development and SEO topics and small business issues, including technologies that support them.