Stressed Out? Try This Four Step Process for Reducing Stress

Everyone is stressed out these days. We work at an unrealistically high level of achievement. Interestingly, our busy lives make us feel accomplished. People have said, “Becky, you are the busiest person I know.” I am not proud of this title. I don’t want to be known as “the busiest person” someone knows. Rather, I would like people to think of myself as having time for others, being thoughtful, and having a good work/life balance. I might seem busy, but it is a good mixture of working hard and playing a lot.

The other day, my awesome business coach, Jane Hamill, asked for something she could do quickly, perhaps while driving, to lessen her stress—a great challenge!

I have been studying de-stressing solutions for the past 10 years as I navigated through starting, running and recently, selling my yoga clothing business, Beckons Yoga Clothing.

Here is a simple 4-step solution for de-stressing on the go:

1. Breathe in deeply and blow it out through your mouth with force. Blow the stress right out of your body.
2. Shake or wiggle your body to loosen up the tight spots. We all hold tension differently in our bodies. By doing a full body shake or wiggle, the tension is loosened and released.
3. Visualize the stress as bubbles in your body. Let those bubbles rise up out of your body and see them popping as they hit the air. Gone!
4. Lastly, think of three things in your life that are fantastic—just the way you want them to be. It might be as simple as “I have a great house.” “I have supportive friends.” Or “I have good food to eat.” No matter how frustrating things get, we all have some parts of our lives that are great. When we re-direct our mind to something good, we pause the stress mechanism and have a better perspective going forward.

Try this and see if it helps. This is definitely a temporary relief tactic. Long term, we need to take our activity levels down a notch or two, ask for help, exercise more, get good sleep, take time each day doing something enriching for ourselves. Report back on whether this 4-step de-stressing process helped in the comments below. If you have other suggestions about how you relieve stress, share them here as well.