The Secret recipe to overcome stress

Whether you are employed, you are in a transitioning phase for your own business, you are just starting out with your entrepreneurial journey, or you deal with any other kind of work, you deal with stress every single day. Sometimes even every minute. Sure, being stressed, as in good stress is fine. Such as when it comes to getting things done and seeing positive results at the beginning of getting a new job or launching a new business. Stress can often times drive you to work longer hours, and push yourself to get things done. However, after a while of working the long hours and giving it 210% of your efforts, all work starts to boil down and get to you.

Suddenly, you come to the realization that the passion you once had for your daily life is dwindling, and you start to question why you even began in the first place. You have lost your work and life balance. Maybe the stress has you waking up frequently throughout the night, or giving you headaches during the day.

Eventually this kind of fatigue and pain drains you of all of your energy that you rely on for your business, job, and of course, your personal life in general. Truthfully, we have all been there. We have all been stressed. You are probably stressed out right now, hence the reason you are going through this in this very minute. If you let stress overwhelm your life and cause damage that you cannot repair, it will prolong your goals and dreams, or maybe even crush them entirely. In all honesty, any career success, independent of your ultimate goal is truly not worth the negatives that the prolonged stress can create.

Research has actually discovered that we have a specific zone in which we function at the most productive rate. Any time we spend outside of that zone because of stress and overwhelm, multi-tasking, or being distracted, is just time spent in mediocrity. Every time you practice this strategy that I'm revealing to you today, you will find that the blood is returning to your brain as each technique is signaling to the body that the fearful, stress-inducing situation is over and the calm has returned.

Now that I have rambled enough about stress and the premise of its creation, I want to move forward on to the actual tactic. However, to do that, I need to provide you with just a little bit of background for all of it to make sense.

Creating A Vision For Your Life or Business

Let me be realistic here with you, though I have been this entire time already. You need to create a vision for your life and business that is actually compelling to you. Something you can stick to, even if it is just short term. You need to have goals regularly that you can achieve and also goals that you work towards. You should align your vision with your value and passion. This will help you to wake up with purpose each morning, ready to tackle the day and achieve your goals, even if it is just one step at a time.

This vision will help you to overcome any obstacle that happens to pop up in the way of your path to righteousness. It will help you to stay focused and on the right track. Whether you are already employed at a job, or you are working for yourself.

Even if you are trying to align yourself with what is happening in your personal life, the vision should apply across the board. You need to have an exciting vision in order for you to truly feel like you have purpose in life. With that excitement comes another challenge...

How do you contain your excitement and align your goals so that they do not end up overwhelming you with long nights and weekends working?

I know that the feeling of overwhelm from finding direction and balance in life can be a good thing and also a bad thing. If you truly find the right thing and get your focus in line, it can create a level of “good” stress. Which will fuel your motivation and keep your passionate towards bettering yourself.

The problem with this is that too much too quickly can result in unnecessary stress in the form of a tight stomach, a more heavily beating heart, and so much more. Have you ever actually taken notice to the way that your body reacts to your different forms of excitement or stress, whether good or bad?

Some of the energy is good, but it needs to be channeled in the right ways and then utilized only when you need it to give you that extra boost. Alright, so with all of that said, the following tactic is an incredibly powerful way to actually channel that energy. Our focus here should already be to create positive stress and levels of excitement.

So now you should channel that energy to become more productive and reduce the general “wear and tear” that this sense of excitement can have on your body. So, what does this special trick consist of? Simple... breathing technique. Now before you laugh, which is not a bad thing, just bare with me here. When we feel stressed, our breathing usually becomes shallower. We tend to start breathing faster and less deep, and then ultimately only use roughly 20% of the oxygen in our lungs.

The result here is actually two-fold:

1. You only circulate a very limited amount of the oxygen that is in your body.

2. Your body goes into “defense mode” because of the shallower breathing, which is often a signal of danger to our natural instincts.

To combat that scenario from fully taking over, you can simply try to stop what you are doing for just a few seconds. From there, just start breathing deep full breaths by inhaling slowly and rising (or puffing) your belly or chest out. Put your hand on the top of your stomach and feel as it rises up and down. Breathe deeply, and slowly for about 10 seconds or so. Doing this sends signals to the body that the “coast is clear” and everything is okay. This will allow you to hopefully take better control of the situation before it gets the better of you. In turn, you will be able to maintain in your high-productivity zone of focus and direction. The zone in which you can actually clearly think and act rationally towards situations. At this point you may be thinking about how stupidly easy this is. And yes, it is! Since you know what the secret recipe to overcome stress now consists of, let us practice it right now just for review.

 With your hand (or hands) on your stomach, breathe in. Take a deep, long and full breath.

 Watch your hands as they rise up with each breath you inhale.

 Then, watch your hand as it lowers with your exhalation. Let the air out of your lungs without losing your level of relaxation.

 Take another deep breath, and let it out again.

 Once more: in and out. Relax while you do this. Clear your mind.

Now... how do you feel? Like the air is cleared and the sanity has returned? Like a breath of fresh air has entered your atmosphere? It is a really good feeling. As you can see, the main way to deal with stress is to address the way it affects your body when it starts to strike. On top of that, you can also combat stress inducing scenarios in your life by being better prepared and have focus towards both your goals and the tasks you have to complete.

Remember, any time you start feeling overwhelmed with your list of tasks that you have to get done, when you feel angry, or when you are worried about anything that life decides to throw your way – you now have a solution. Heck, even if you are sitting in traffic, fuming because you are late for something – you can pause, take a few deep, calm and slow breaths, and re-align yourself with the world.

Think about the habits that you have developed, both positive and negative. All it takes is some forethought and effort to implement a breathing session when the going gets too tough to handle. Invest ten seconds into breathing, close your eyes if necessary, and shut the world off. Take a deep breath and start again. One step at a time, day by day, you can take control of your life.