Do you find yourself buckling with stress and anxiety on a daily basis?

Do you find yourself buckling with stress and anxiety on a daily basis?  Feeling like you have nothing left in the tank to tackle any more issues coming your way?  This is a very vulnerable position to be in and your nervous system will be running on overdrive, which is not only bad for your emotions, but also very bad for your internal health. (Sandy Hounsell )

It doesn’t have to be that way.  You have as much ability as the next person to build up some resilience to deal with stress and anxiety.  Let me explain.

Anxiety is your body’s way of letting you know that something wrong.  In the past it protected us from predators.  Our body would kick into fight or flight mode and we would prepare to stand our ground and go in to battle or find the nearest escape route and high tail it out of there!

Now we are surrounded with so many different pressures from work colleagues, wives, husbands, children, brothers, mothers, sisters and fathers, neighbours, friends, strangers, debt collectors, investors, competitors, governments, clients, bosses etc, etc.  You get the idea.  It is no longer about us being the next meal but more like we are being pecked away at slowly piece-by-piece.

Now more than ever, we need to build a routine around our own self-care to build our own worth, health and happiness to maintain strong mental health resilience.  We are all going to have bad days now and then, but by maintaining good self-care on a regular basis we build our internal energy and are able to start to brush off smaller challenges and prevent ourselves from toppling over completely with the big challenges.  As we continue along this path we gain more and more resilience and ability to cope with pressures.

So what can you do to improve your self-care and reduce anxiety?  Here are a few ideas:

1. Meditate/deep breathing

Make a regular time of the day to sit quietly for 10 minutes or more.  Take some deep breaths in through your nose, fill your chest and belly and breath out slowly through your mouth.  Count for 6 seconds while you breath in, hold if for a couple of seconds and then breath out for 6 seconds.  Keep counting to prevent your mind from wandering off.  Concentrate on tuning in to your body, feel where the tension is and imagine breathing in light to that area and releasing the tension from that part of your body as you breath out. 

There are plenty of meditation techniques and suggestions, Google them or join a local group and build on your daily practice.  Notice how different you feel afterwards.

2. Get daily exercise

I know this is harped on all the time but it is seriously something that you must do to make yourself feel good.  It has so many benefits.  Develop a routine, whether it is walking before breakfast, lunch or dinner, just make the plan and stick to it.  It doesn’t have to be a huge amount or high intensity to provide wellbeing benefits.  You just have to do something physical that you enjoy, daily.  Find something that will be easy for you to do and don’t try to push yourself to increase it too soon or too often.  Just go easy on yourself and relish in the small achievements that you start to create.  Again, afterwards, notice how it makes you feel.

3.  Write daily

I know, many of you will probably scoff at this one.  I know you are not teenagers, but you won’t know how much this will help you until you try.  Give it a go.  Each day at a regular time take 5 to 10 minutes to write down how you are feeling and what has been happening for you.  This is an act of release and it also helps to create clarity about feelings and prevent your mind from going over and over things, making them bigger and bigger.  Try it out for a month.  How does it make you feel after each diary entry? 

4.  Eat well and drink plenty of water

With poor quality fuel your car will cough and splutter and perform badly.  You too will start to struggle if you neglect to fuel yourself with good quality, nutritional food.  How much do you go out of your way for a loved one or good client or friend?  You should be your own closest friend.  Go out of your way for yourself!  Fuel yourself up regularly.

Find a way to build a routine that will ensure you get regular, healthy food on the table for yourself.  I can’t “stress” this one enough.  It is the backbone of self-care.  If you really can’t manage it, organise a healthy meal delivery service, there are a lot starting to pop up in major cities.