From the moment you wake up, until you lay your head at night, you’re guaranteed to experience stress at some level. Though stress can be a helpful vehicle to drive progress, it can also be detrimental to your health.

Whether it's a personal challenge, work related pressure, or simply the demands of typical everyday life responsibilities like parenting, stress is an unavoidable part of your life.

And what’s also true is that without managing it well, stress has the capacity to take a serious toll on your mental and physical wellbeing. Stress left unmanaged can ruin your relationships and become an obstacle to you accomplishing your goals with any success.

However,...

Everyone is familiar with stress!

In fact, as a result of the hustle and bustle of modern life, stress has established itself as an all too familiar companion. Albeit an unwelcome one.

In this article, we'll dip into the interconnected nature of stress by exploring the relationship between our body's responses to stress and how they interact with our mind.

If, like me, you’ve ever felt incapable of managing stress, or overwhelmed by its weight and impact on your life, you’ll benefit from setting aside time to read on.

By understanding these connections between your body and mind and how they relate to stress, you'll be better equipped to manage and reduce the impact of stress....

Stress is a normal part of life. In fact, if you didn't ever feel stressed, I'd argue you're either a zombie or on a high dosage of something you'd be better off without.

But that said, make no mistake, without learning to manage stress, it can soon turn into a serious problem, especially when it becomes overwhelming or chronic.

When stressed, our bodies release hormones that can have a negative impact on both our physical and mental health.

Understanding the connection between your thoughts, emotions, and stress levels can be a game changer when wanting to manage stress more effectively. 

Why?

Because your thoughts about a situation can have a big impact on how you feel emotionally,...

In overloading our brain we limit our ability to perform.

This is why finding ways to manage how we use our brain and reduce the amount of stress we place on it, is important to our wellbeing and effectiveness.

Each day we’re faced with making thousands of decisions.

Some are mundane, like what cereal to have, whilst others are more serious, like whether to sell our home or undergo surgery.

Decision making is also taxing on our working memory - our ability to hold, process and use new information to guide our behaviour (Hall & Jarrold, 2015).

Similarly, as we use our decision making muscles, our ability to self-regulate and make sound choices reduces.

This results in an...

Do you ever hear people saying they struggle to set aside time for themselves because they're too busy? Or, how about describing "me time" as being self-indulgent or selfish?

Thing is, these ways of thinking are often associated with self-care. Which for many, can be an unhelpful barrier to taking better care of themselves.

Overview

Self-care is a conscious decision to act in ways that support and promote your health and wellbeing. A holistic approach will likely cover the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of your life.

Though varied, self-care can include more than just those commonly known activities such as exercise, eating well, meditating, and...

We all have rituals of some kind. These could be described as routine tasks or activities we do on a regular basis; more often than not, on autopilot. Showering, exercising, and drinking a morning coffee, are typical examples. 

Some of your rituals occur by default, as they'd have been ingrained in you from an early age. For example, bed making, teeth brushing, and locking the front door at night. Possibly!

However, there'll be others you might've introduced in later life. Which I suspect, in most cases would've been incorporated in an effort to improve your lives in some way shape or form.

For example, a daily exercise schedule, self-care...

In processing too much information we limit our ability to perform at our best and increase the risk of decision fatigue. This is why finding ways to avoid brain overload is key to our effectiveness.

Each day we’re faced with making thousands of decisions. Some are mundane, like what cereal to have, while others are more serious. For example, whether to sell our home or undergo surgery.

Decision making is also taxing on our working memory. That is, our ability to hold, process and use new information to guide our behaviour (Hall & Jarrold, 2015).

Similarly, as we use our decision making muscles, our ability to self-regulate and make sound choices reduces. This results in an...

Reviewing your wellbeing is good for your health. Learning what affects you is also helpful for making decisions about any improvements needed to take better care of yourself.

Management expert, Peter Drucker, stated:

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” 

For high achievers, I believe this maxim applies to performance and wellbeing. So, just as tracking your habits can help you achieve more, mood tracking is worth consideration as a method for analysing and improving your wellbeing.

Defining emotion and mood

In addition to feelings, the terms emotion and mood are often used interchangeably to describe a state of...

Dave, a twenty-something professional that I've worked with for some time now, lives with social anxiety but is learning to overcome it - one day at a time!

From the outside he appears calm. To his work colleagues reasonably composed and confident. But to his closest friends and partner, Dave's anxiety has been, on occasion, a disruption.

Take for example his partner changing plans for a day trip at the last minute because he was anxious of being alone until evening. Or, his friends being unable to enjoy an evening out, as a result of him having a panic attack at the thought of being around a crowd.

Social anxiety

But Dave's story isn't uncommon. Though anxiety...

Stress is an all too familiar struggle for most people. So much so, that it can easily become viewed as something we just need to learn to deal with. To get on with. To live with!

But it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, with a little thought and a commitment to regularly practicing some simple techniques, we can learn to keep a good handle on the stressors we face in life.

Now, let me be clear; there's no silver bullet that will eradicate stress from your life forever. And this is because stress is a natural response to situations your brain views as being a threat to your safety.

And this is actually a good thing, as it can serve to keep you from danger, keep you...