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The Benefits of Practicing Mindfulness

Let’s talk about mindfulness for a moment. Simply put, mindfulness is about paying attention and living in the moment. Think of it as taking the time to stop and smell the roses. It’s about cutting out the distractions and noise. It’s about choosing to focus on something in particular. There are some big benefits to practicing mindfulness. Top among them is of course feeling less stressed. One of the reasons we feel stressed is because we are pulled in many different directions and are constantly bombarded by new information, media, and demands. Practicing mindfulness allows you to tune out the noise and give your mind a break. This in turn will help you relieve stress and by making mindfulness part of your daily routine, you can start to permanently reduce stress and negate some of its negative side effects. Practicing mindfulness doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. You don’t have to get into any long mindfulness meditations, unless you want to. You can start with some very ea...
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Embrace the Fun - How Hugs and Laughter Help Reduce Stress

In one of my previous posts about reducing stress, I briefly mentioned the benefits of hugging and laughter to help reduce stress. They are such fun, easy, and powerful techniques that anyone can do just about anywhere, I thought it was time to dive a little deeper and look at why they work and how we can actively start using them to reduce the negative effects of chronic stress.    Let’s start by talking about hugs. Have you ever noticed how a good hug will make you feel better? It calms you and changes your entire outlook on the world and whatever it is that’s been upsetting or stressing you out. Turns out there’s some science behind hugs and a reason we start to feel better.    There are measurable effects on your heart and on the stress-level of your brain activity when you hug and those benefits will ramp up significantly around the twenty second mark. As an added bonus, your body will release oxytocin, a feel-good hormone. It’s no wonder your whole outl...
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Exercise Is A Powerful Stress Buster

Did you know that exercise is one of the best ways to beat stress? It works in a variety of different ways, not the least of which is the release of endorphins, the feel-good hormones. Of course exercise has all sorts of other benefits too, but for now, let’s focus on the stress reducing properties and endorphins play a big role in that. Moderate exercise is also great for your heart and will help reduce blood pressure. In other words, exercise helps you directly combat some of the worst effects of stress. Another reason exercise is great for stress relief is because it helps you sleep better at night. There’s nothing like deep sleep to help you relax and wake up refreshed and decidedly less stressed. Getting a good workout in or doing a few yoga exercises before bed can help you get to sleep sooner and stay asleep longer. Give exercise a try and see the benefits for yourself. It doesn’t take a lot of exercise to start seeing the benefits. Something as simple as a ten-minute walk w...
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Meditation, Journaling and Other Ways to De-Stress

  Are you ready to actively do something to reduce stress on a daily basis? If not, I would like to encourage you to pick up and develop a daily habit that helps you accomplish just that. Stress not only reduces your quality of life; it can also negatively affect your health. There’s a reason why they say stress kills. Start doing something about it and embrace life to the fullest with some of these simple techniques that help you stress less.    Start Meditating   One of the best tools for reducing stress is meditation. You can start with a simple breathing meditation by getting comfortable in a quiet spot and focusing on relaxing and thinking about nothing but your breath. From there, give some of the free guided meditations a try. There are even some wonderful apps out there that turn your smartphone into your favorite new meditation device. Set aside a few minutes each day to meditate and watch the stress melt away.    Keep a Journal  ...
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Stress Less and Get More Done by Sleeping More

  Do you know what one of the most effective ways to de-stress is? It’s sleeping. Yes, exercise is great and meditation is a wonderful tool, but the best thing you can do to stress less on a regular basis is to get a goodnight sleep. You already know this is true. Think about how much harder your job and your life in general feel after a night when you were up with the kids, or working until four in the morning to finish an important project. You get grumpy, it’s harder to focus, and every little problem suddenly becomes insurmountable. You feel a lot more stressed throughout the day and it only gets worse if you end up sleeping poorly for several days in a row. Now here’s the interesting bit. The average person doesn't get the optimal amount of sleep at night, and even when we do, our sleep quality often isn’t great. Too often our sleep is disrupted throughout the night, even if we don’t fully wake up and most of us struggle with falling asleep. Thankfully there are a lot of...
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Review and Release - Stop Trying to Do All the Things

One of the main reasons why we are so much more stressed than let’s say our grandparents were, is because we are taking on a lot more. We have families where each partner is working a full-time job and possibly a side hustle as well to make ends meet financially. That leaves all the hard work of keeping house and raising a family, which needs to be done during “off” hours. Most of us no longer mentally clock out at the end of the workday. Instead, we take our work home, and are reachable at all hours via text message or email. Add to that the stress constant connectivity and social media creates and it’s no wonder we’re more stressed than ever. It’s time to do something about it. It’s time to stop trying to do all the things all the time and focus on reducing stress in your life. Start by reviewing everything you do in a given day. A great tool for this is a time log. Keep a simple piece of paper or a small notebook with you at all times. Set an alert on your phone to go off every 30...
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Stress Kills

   Isn’t It Time You Did Something About It?    Are you feeling stressed? I’d be surprised if you weren’t. Between the growing demands of our jobs, raising a family while working full-time, and the increasing need to stay connected all day every day, most of us feel stressed out more often than we like to admit. Add to it a chronic lack of sleep and exercise and you have a recipe for disaster. Stress kills and that’s no joke. Let’s look at some of the worst negative side effects of stress and what you can do to stress less and relax more. Stress will cause your blood pressure to rise. You’ve experienced this when you found yourself hot and with a raging headache when you were in a particularly stressful situation. Feeling that way from time to time is no big deal. The real danger is in the lower-level stress we all feel on a daily basis. It can lead to hypertension and a higher risk of suffering from a heart attack or stroke. Next, let’s look at sleep. When y...
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