Stress affects your mental health and ultimately can affect your physical health. While you cannot remove all stress triggers from daily life, you can learn to reduce stress by adopting various mental exercises and techniques. If you dedicate some time to learning and practicing stress management exercises, you will be able to do them automatically so you can reduce stress more quickly.
Postive Thinking
Thinking positively has a dramatic effect on how you perceive situations, which can reduce your stress level. If you spend the day engaged in negative self-talk about yourself and the people around you, you grow more pessimistic. Instead, focus on the positive in yourself and others, and you will have an increased sense of well-being. Repeat affirmations, celebrate small successes and make short-term, achievable goals and you will weather stressful situations better. Positive thinking can also reduce depression, improve your health and increase your life span.
Meditation
The ancient tradition of meditation can help you manage stress, feel more relaxed and focus your thoughts. If possible, find a dark, quiet space in which to meditate. Sit comfortably, either on a chair or on a cushion. Silence distracting thoughts by repeating a mantra, a phrase or word that has a positive association for you. Breathe deeply, filling your abdomen as well as your chest with air, and exhale fully. Tense and release your muscles from head to toe to ensure you do not clench anything during meditation. Once you learn how to meditate, you can enter a relaxed state more quickly, spending as little as 15 or 20 minutes to feel its benefits.
Visualization
Forming peaceful, positive mental pictures can help you manage stress. Like meditation, visualization entails reducing your surrounding stimulus so you can focus inward. Close your eyes or find a secluded spot while doing visualization. Create a rich visual story, with colorful details, that has you making a journey to a calming place. Imagine the sights, sounds, feelings and smells at this location. Picture yourself engaging with your surroundings and feeling an increased sense of well-being.
Considerations
Relaxation techniques take practice to master. You may have negative thoughts and feelings of anxiety while learning to do them. Continue practicing and refining your methods to find what works best for you. You may need to do mental exercises in combination with something more physical, such as deep breathing exercises, tai chi or yoga. If you have persistent feelings of extreme stress and anxiety, consult your doctor or a mental health professional.
