We all experience moments when we feel like everything is all happening all at once; we are running around the clock with far too many things that need to get done, we end up feeling tremendously overwhelmed with almost no motive to finish any of our tasks, which in this case can be simply summarized in one word: stress.
Stress is often an experience of when you are overloaded with tasks, thoughts, emotions, or even all three, to the extent to which you can feel you are unable to cope with regular day-to-day activities. Everyone experiences stress differently, however, there are common signs of stress like intense feelings of anxiety, having difficulty concentrating, short-temperedness, physical pain and muscle tension, lack of sleep, and more that I'm sure you can think of.
Low levels of stress can be good for us, healthy even! But when it gets to the point where we’re feeling debilitated, exhausted, and unable to move forward, here are five tips small, but big, tips on how to cope.
When we feel stressed, we tend to typically look at the glass half empty and even generalize the idea to our entire life. So for example, if we are having a bad day at work, we start with “my job is very tiring” and end up with the generalized thought of “my life is very tiring”, which can lead to making us feel far more stressed. Instead, we need to be more aware of the good things in our day, even the tiny little things like if your colleague offers you a donut at one of your meetings for example. Being more aware of the small (but big) things in your day has the power to change the thought of “my job is very tiring” to “work today was very tiring, but I had a donut!” Maybe then, adding up all the little things together will make you feel less stressed about your very tiring day.
A huge cause of stress in your life could be birthed from the wanting to control every little thing. If we refuse to accept the fact that some events will happen in our lives that we simply do not have control over, we can end up feeling far more depleted trying to tackle them. The sun will come up tomorrow, with or without us completing our to do list. Remember to bite off only the things you have control over, and that you can actually do in a day. Things then may feel a little less stressful.
You may already have too much on your plate, causing you to feel the weight and pressure of having to juggle everything at once. That can be super stressful. If you needed a reminder today that it is wise and loving of you to know your limits, and stick to them – here it is. Creating boundaries, and knowing your priorities is critical to managing your stress, and also managing the expectations of those around you! If anything is added to your plate that you do not have the capacity for now, remember that it is okay to say no, and excuse yourself from adding it to your load.
It sounds tremendously obvious to be stated, but considering our collective state of exhaustion (and the fact that most of us are scrolling TikTok at 4 in the morning) it’s important to say! We all seem to compromise sleep when we are overloaded with tasks because we simply need more time. Well, it may give us more time, but it also produces far more stress. It is important to remember that for our body to be able to work efficiently and effectively throughout the day, it must rest, and the best way to do that is to have enough sleep at night. Think about it this way, less sleep tonight, means some work done tonight (but probably not your best work), but then makes you far too tired to get through tomorrow. Break the catch 22, and go to bed!
This might seem very simple, but highly effective! Always remember to do something for yourself during the day, anything! It could be watching an episode from your favourite series before bed, having lunch outside, meeting a friend, getting some ice cream on the way home, listen to music (and doing nothing else!), literally anything that you enjoy no matter how small it may seem. Again, the little things often are the big things when it comes to coping with stress.
