It's Not You, It's Stress

Why is it that some days it seems like everything, big and small, irritates us and other days it’s way easier to let things go? More often than not, those irritated days are days when we're especially stressed the f-out. Chronic Stress is a real challenge for most us with 55% of Americans reporting to suffer from chronic stress symptoms like shortness of breath, anxiety and poor sleep on a daily basis. If gone untreated, chronic stress causes accelerated aging, weight loss resistance and a multitude of physical and mental health issues.

When you’re stressed out, you’re operating in the sympathetic nervous system also referred to as the fight or flight state. To feel better, you have to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest and restore state. In the parasympathetic state we feel calmer, more focused and can take on life’s challenges more easily.

The more you take control of recognizing when your operating in the sympathetic and use tools to activate the parasympathetic in the moment the better you get at managing stress over time which results in you increasing your capacity to handle repeated stressful moments better on a daily basis. The key is to discover the tools that will work best for you in any given situation.

Here's something you can try that will help you discover the tools that work best for you to activate your rest and restore state whenever you need it: Over the next two weeks write down everything you do that makes you feel good and everything that makes you feel bad. Writing it down is important. The things that make you feel bad are your stressors and the things that make you feel good are your parasympathetic activators. At the end of the two weeks look at your list and add anything else that comes to mind for both the feels good and feels bad categories.

Keep these lists handy - on your phone or near your desk for example. Anytime you're feeling bad see if it's on your list and if not add it - then try your best to walk away, stop doing it and choose to do something on the feels good list to get your nervous system back into balance. Of course there’s stressful times that we can’t just walk away from, so make sure you have a few tools that work when you’re in a public or face to face situation that’s stressful, like breathing exercises or tapping. To discover new tools that work to help you activate the parasympathetic, head over to our Instagram where we post all the latest tools and tips that work to get you back to a rest and restore state.

Here's some things on our list:

Feels Bad
Checking email or social media more than five times a day
Back to back meetings more than two hours in a row
Driving

Feels Good
Belly and alternate nostril breathing
Watching something funny
Scent tents

You can also take the feel good style quiz to learn the feel good solutions that work best for you✌️