A simple technique to manage stress

Life can be stressful. Sure, at this stage of our lives most of us have learned not to sweat the small stuff, but sometimes all the small stuff adds up to one big stuff. And let’s face it, no matter how much we have dealt with our past baggage, we all have something that still triggers us.

For those times, it is useful to have a technique that we can pull out of our stress managing toolbox. Silver & Grace guest post author, Mike Reeves-McMillan, offers up a very interesting, yet very simple one.

Give it a try!

“Smile – you’ll live longer”. That’s not just cute advice. A study in the journal Circulation found a clear link between optimism and improved heart health.

Why might that be? Here’s one possible reason: being angry and upset disturbs your heart rhythms, making them more irregular and, you might say, accident-prone. Sadness and fear, likewise. And these emotions also affect your blood pressure and the level of cholesterol in your blood.

But knowing that getting stressed is bad for you isn’t very helpful by itself. What can you actually do to manage your life stress?

Most people don’t think that there’s much they can do. Emotions and high levels of stress leave us feeling helpless and out of control (and feeling out of control leads to more stress). But there are simple stress management techniques that help you cope with stress and lift your mood, without needing medication (or even chocolate, which a lot of people try to use as a mood improver. It doesn’t really work, by the way.)

Here’s one of several stress reduction methods from my free e-course, Simple Stress Management Techniques. It’s so simple you can set it up in a few minutes, but it provides stress relief in seconds. I use it myself whenever my emotions threaten to be overwhelming.

First, sit quietly and comfortably somewhere you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes, and close your eyes. Now imagine, as vividly as you can, using all your senses, a time when you felt confident, competent and in control, perhaps when you’d just achieved a significant goal in your life or had done a really good job of something, perhaps just a very happy moment when you felt on top of the world.

Intensify it. Turn up that feeling as if you were turning up the volume on a radio.

Now press your thumb to one of your fingers, firmly. Hold the thought, the feeling and the finger-and-thumb press for a few seconds, then let go.

What you’ve just done is set up a connection between the part of your brain that feels that finger press and the part that feels the positive emotion. It’s like there’s a wire running between them, and by turning one on (the finger press) you turn on the other (the good feeling). Try it.

It’s good to do the setup exercise I’ve just described several times to let it really bed in. Then, next time it feels like things are getting on top of you, you can “import” the good feeling, the emotions around being competent and in control, into the stressful situation.

After all, your brain stores that feeling. It’s always there. You just needed a way to access it when you’re in a situation that calls for it.

And now you have one. Enjoy!

More information!

Mike Reeves-McMillan is a hypnotherapist and health and personal development coach. He blogs at Living Skillfully about emotions, stress, confidence, health and wellbeing, and the mind-body connection.

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