Dr. Slava Shut

We’ve gone over a few of the ways that stress can cause problems in your life. Even though the right amount of discomfort can be motivation to improve things, unmanageable stress can cause serious problems to your health and well-being.

On the other hand, there are some definite advantages to living a stress-free life, or at least one that’s close to stress-free. There will always be difficulties in life, but there’s never a reason to be so stressed that it hurts you.

Welcome to Topic Thursday, where we discuss something specifically related to business, family, health, or life in general. Today, we’re going to dive a little deeper into the advantages of de-stressing your life.

Even if your life isn’t as relaxing as you’d like it to be sometimes, you can always do something to address your stress. It doesn’t always have to be something huge, like an expensive European vacation, either. Sometimes, a hot bath can be just what you need to relax your body and ease your mind.

Whatever methods you choose to get back to a healthy, productive mindset and achieve your goals, here are some of the advantages of reducing your unmanageable stress:

Better Performance

When your concentration is being pulled in a bunch of different directions about a bunch of different things, it’s harder to focus on any one of them. This can lead to all kinds of preventable mistakes. On the other hand, when you’re managing your stress effectively throughout your life, it’s a lot easier to allocate the mental bandwidth it takes to concentrate on things.

When you’re more effective with the things you’re trying to do, this causes you to have to fix mistakes less often. In turn, you end up with more time and energy that you can now choose to allocate to other areas of life. When you’re focused, you can do things well the first time without repeating your efforts. Success breeds confidence.

Physical Benefits of Reducing Stress

Think about the last time you were really stressed out about something. Regardless of what the situation was and how you handled it, your body reacts to stress in predictable ways. For instance, when you’re frequently in stressful situations, your cortisol levels are higher. The muscles in your body are less relaxed and more tense. Your circulatory system also constricts.

Over time, if you stay stressed out you might become accustomed to this. It’s almost as if you settle into this new normal with higher stress. When you finally address this and get back to a true normal, you’ll notice a huge difference in your physical comfort and mental outlook.

Patients have reported healthier appetites, better sleep, and lower anxiety levels, not to mention reductions in blood pressure. High blood pressure can be exacerbated by diet, lack of exercise, and high stress levels.

Better Memory

Practice, repetition and conditioning can help to ingrain certain patterns. This can be very useful making the things you need to do more automatic. If you had to concentrate on firing every muscle and rotating every joint on your walk to the bathroom, it’d take you much longer to get there. But the act of walking is so reinforced in our brains and minds that we don’t really have to think about it much anymore.

There are lots of things in life that take a lot of effort to learn, but once you do, you tend not to forget. It’s like riding a bike.

But if you’re under enough stress, even something you’ve been doing easily since childhood can cause you some problems. People under stress tend to recall processes incompletely. They can lose the ability to use some skills altogether.

When your mind and body are calm and without stress, recalling memories and procedures are much easier. If forgetfulness causes you a little bit of anxiety, it can really be exacerbated by stress while you’re trying to remember something.

Now you know some ways to address your stress levels, and a little more about what you stand to gain with less stress in your life. Restructuring things so that they work better for you will be a process that might take patience and planning. Cutting out stressful routines and habits can take some adjustment. But the rewards you reap by improving your life will far outweigh the temporary inconvenience of creating a new neural pathway. It’s worth it.

Stop waiting for things to happen. Aren’t you ready to take control of your life and start making things happen? 

If you need to transform your stressful day-to-day troubles into a successful everyday routine, and you know the time is now, contact my team today to schedule a 1-on-1 with me. Let’s get you back to your healthiest, happiest self!