Millions of Americans experience chronic stress. In fact, everyone feels stressed at some point in their life. Busy professionals are more likely to experience chronic stress.
The more stress you experience, the more difficult it will be for you to think and feel positively. How you think influences how you relate to others. Rather than assume others have positive intentions, stress causes you to distrust others. You begin to judge others intentions. This lack of trust impacts your ability to work with others and will influence how you relate to your loved ones.
When stressed you feel more anger, irritability, and frustration. You will be less likely to open up to your co-workers. It will be difficult to share your stress and upset with your co-workers or your supervisor. You may be less likely to open up with friends and family about your job. If you are under a lot of stress and experiencing negative feelings you may hold back from sharing this with loved ones. You don’t want to be negative or sound like you are complaining all the time, so you just say nothing at all. Sadly this can cause you to feel you cannot relate to others and will make you feel lonely. You are left alone to carry the burden of your stress.
Holding onto stress can hurt relationships with loved ones and colleagues. Chronic stress causes negative thinking. However you want to believe you are a good, kind, and successful person.
People do not like having opposing beliefs. You want your thoughts, morals, feelings, and actions to be in alignment. If you are constantly stressed and feel under pressure you will question your morals and values. For example if you get a thought in your mind you need to believe this to be true. Therefore you look for evidence to support your beliefs. The more evidence you have the stronger your belief. Let’s say you believe you should experience peace and joy but when you look at how stressed and frustrated you feel at work you see you do not have the evidence to support the belief you should experience peace and joy. Stress causes your mind to shift.
This mind shift challenges your spiritual wellness. Spiritual wellness is different for everyone but it means that you have values and beliefs that provide you purpose. Your compassion, love and ability to forgive, along with your efforts to do nice things for others defines your morals and establishes your spiritual wellness. But the more stress you experience and more your health, emotions, and thinking decline you also start to lose balance in this area.
When chronically stressed the brain does not think clearly and you are not able to recognize the good or the positive. If you body is under frequent stress it is impossible to see the good and connect with your spiritual beliefs and morals. If you want to reconnect with your purpose and restore balance you must relax the body.
Relaxing will help you refocus your thinking, will bring the body to a relaxed state, and will improve your mental and emotional health. I understand that during the course of your busy day it is not easy to take a relaxing break. Some examples of relaxation during your work day include 1. taking a nice walk outside, 2. enjoying lunch or coffee outside on a park bench, 3. practicing yoga, or 4. Taking deep breaths. You are busy and taking time to practice relaxation is not always easy or on your mind. Here are some quick and easy relaxation techniques you can use during your day to help you relax your mind and your body.
