You begin the day early only because you have a one-hour commute to office. You sweat it out 10 hours a day for six days a week at work, only to carry more work home. You get the Sunday off - well, most often - which you keep aside for cleaning, kids, shopping, movies and sleep. You hate it when your friends ask, "Wasup?" "Nothing much," you tell them. After all, you’ve been following the same routine, day after day, week after week.
Stringent deadlines and demanding bosses, jangled nerves and anxious moments, traffic woes, tobacco smoke, fast food on-the-go, pollution and flu in the air, alcohol and fun, contaminated water that gives you the ‘runs’, matchbox houses and neighbourhood grouses, away from home and all alone – living in a metro is not easy. And when the stress becomes unbearable, it can lead to a host of serious illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, depression, autoimmune diseases and reproductive problems.
You don’t have to change your job or city to beat stress. These five tips will help you stay relaxed:
Manage your time
Are most of your days cluttered with "assignments" and "to-do's"? Time management experts recommend taking care of as much of the small stuff as possible right away. For instance, stop on any quick errands you can on your way to work, then write back any quick e-mails, make any quick phone calls and get any other fast tasks out of the way immediately.
That way, you can completely forget about these things, rather than holding them somewhere in the back of your mind to accumulate and do later. The result: You feel less cluttered, less overwhelmed and less stressed.
Avoid alcohol and tobacco
While a peg or two will make you feel relaxed, alcohol stresses your body in many ways - through dehydration and intoxication. Alcohol can numb the senses into believing that they are relaxed when in all reality you feel just as stressed as you did beforehand only with alcohol taking the proverbial edge off things.
Excessive alcohol can make you feel more stressed, even depressed and can make you aggressive. Cigarettes work in a similar fashion. You smoke thinking you'll relax when all it does is give you temporary relief before the problem comes to haunt to you again.
Go take a walk
The next time you feel the tension in a room, simply take a walk. Walking gives you time to think, time to get away from the stressors, and also think about solutions. Even simple stretching exercises can do wonders for stress relief. Certain forms of exercise (jogging, swimming, hiking and cycling) require a fairly consistent repetitive motion that can alter one's state of consciousness like what happens during meditation. Breathing and movements may in part be responsible for the feelings of calmness and tranquility you feel after exercise.
Meditate for mental clarity
Meditation lowers resting heart rate, stress, anxiety, frustration, and rate of breathing. It reduces risk of heart disease and is associated with the increase of emotional intelligence and mental clarity. So put on some soothing meditation music and let your body relax.
LOL!
Laugh out loud! There's a reason why you find more laughing clubs now than you did say, 10 years ago. People just don't laugh enough and need time, space and company to laugh. Having a good laugh can make stress melt away in an instant. Plus, it decreases blood pressure and heart rate, increases oxygen in the blood and makes the body secrete an enzyme that helps protect your stomach from ulcers. So tap into your funny bone and laugh your guts out!
Sitting on the phone making sales calls for six hours straight, or staring at the computer for five, is stressful, simply because of the repetitiveness of the activity. Break up your workday, by taking a walk outside, a “power nap,” stopping to grab a bite to eat or even switching to a different work-related task, will help you to feel more invigorated and less tense. Remember, variety adds spice to life!
Stringent deadlines and demanding bosses, jangled nerves and anxious moments, traffic woes, tobacco smoke, fast food on-the-go, pollution and flu in the air, alcohol and fun, contaminated water that gives you the ‘runs’, matchbox houses and neighbourhood grouses, away from home and all alone – living in a metro is not easy. And when the stress becomes unbearable, it can lead to a host of serious illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, depression, autoimmune diseases and reproductive problems.
You don’t have to change your job or city to beat stress. These five tips will help you stay relaxed:
Manage your time
Are most of your days cluttered with "assignments" and "to-do's"? Time management experts recommend taking care of as much of the small stuff as possible right away. For instance, stop on any quick errands you can on your way to work, then write back any quick e-mails, make any quick phone calls and get any other fast tasks out of the way immediately.
That way, you can completely forget about these things, rather than holding them somewhere in the back of your mind to accumulate and do later. The result: You feel less cluttered, less overwhelmed and less stressed.
Avoid alcohol and tobacco
While a peg or two will make you feel relaxed, alcohol stresses your body in many ways - through dehydration and intoxication. Alcohol can numb the senses into believing that they are relaxed when in all reality you feel just as stressed as you did beforehand only with alcohol taking the proverbial edge off things.
Excessive alcohol can make you feel more stressed, even depressed and can make you aggressive. Cigarettes work in a similar fashion. You smoke thinking you'll relax when all it does is give you temporary relief before the problem comes to haunt to you again.
Go take a walk
The next time you feel the tension in a room, simply take a walk. Walking gives you time to think, time to get away from the stressors, and also think about solutions. Even simple stretching exercises can do wonders for stress relief. Certain forms of exercise (jogging, swimming, hiking and cycling) require a fairly consistent repetitive motion that can alter one's state of consciousness like what happens during meditation. Breathing and movements may in part be responsible for the feelings of calmness and tranquility you feel after exercise.
Meditate for mental clarity
Meditation lowers resting heart rate, stress, anxiety, frustration, and rate of breathing. It reduces risk of heart disease and is associated with the increase of emotional intelligence and mental clarity. So put on some soothing meditation music and let your body relax.
LOL!
Laugh out loud! There's a reason why you find more laughing clubs now than you did say, 10 years ago. People just don't laugh enough and need time, space and company to laugh. Having a good laugh can make stress melt away in an instant. Plus, it decreases blood pressure and heart rate, increases oxygen in the blood and makes the body secrete an enzyme that helps protect your stomach from ulcers. So tap into your funny bone and laugh your guts out!
Sitting on the phone making sales calls for six hours straight, or staring at the computer for five, is stressful, simply because of the repetitiveness of the activity. Break up your workday, by taking a walk outside, a “power nap,” stopping to grab a bite to eat or even switching to a different work-related task, will help you to feel more invigorated and less tense. Remember, variety adds spice to life!
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