5 ways to ease stress

When the balance tips away from comfortable stress, it’s easy to feel as if life is getting on top of you. Try these 5 suggestions to reduce the stress levels and to shift your mind away from a worry that’s occupying too much of your thinking.

1. Go for a brisk walk

yes even if it’s raining, wear the right clothes and then walk quickly for 20 minutes. Make sure that as you walk you look around you to take in the world, and breathe deeply.  The action of moving your body at pace, and a change of scenery where you are seeing the world at work and  play will get your mind unstuck and lift your mood.

2.  Play a game

Whether it’s solitaire, or something on your Wii or PS3 with someone else or alone, half an hour of getting into a challenging but fun game takes your mind away onto something else, freshens you up and allows you to come up with a new way of thinking. Try this link to a free game of checkers http://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/checkers.shtml

3. Volunteer

It doesn’t have to take up too much time in the week but helping a local charity, school or other group will help to take your mind away from the day to day worries and allow you the wonderful benefits of making new friends, learning new skills and opening up new opportunities. Most types of volunteering will produce positive feelings and here’s a link to a Press Association release describing some recent research http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYbaqsrGFjRXD9olpjfCq79je5cg

4.  Get creative

You don’t need to be a trained artist and it’s not about getting it ‘right’ it’s about letting go of constraints and the need to do something by a given time to some predefined standard. So try a creative art, perhaps take some photos on your mobile phone and then edit them on your PC, or get some pastels and sketch. Creative outlets without rules can free our thinking to the point where we feel more confident, happier and more able to deal with life issues. I recently bought some air drying clay and decided I would be a sculptor for the afternoon and it was great fun I made this and as you can see it’s about the journey rather than the destination!

Man thinking on nature - My first sculpture!

5. Talk to a friend

Yes this is tried and tested and the positive impact on stress of ‘offloading’ to a friend or someone close cannot be underestimated. As the saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved. Speaking with someone about your stresses can open up a new approach you may not have seen before and you will feel supported which of course increases your confidence.

Say hello with a smile and be more confident meeting new people

Sometimes it’s difficult to try something new because we are worried about how to meet and speak with new people. More to the point, we are afraid of looking silly, out of place or stuttering our words.  We can often build up situations in our minds to a point where we will believe that it’s not worth going to a social gathering, starting an evening class or evening changing our jobs because we won’t be accepted and worse still will be rejected by those already there.

There is no magic trick for making new friends or breaking the ice in a way that feels totally comfortable if we are usually shy or  lacking confidence. There is a way to reduce the pressure and will take practice and that is to make sure you smile when greeting someone and more importantly make eye contact.

This is something you probably hear often and in fact is a basic principle of getting to know new people but the power of smiling sincerely cannot be taken lightly.  Think for a moment when you walk into a room for an interview or go to the see the doctor, if you see a smiling face and you are acknowledged with warm eye contact you feel more settled, comfortable and more able to speak  freely.  If however the person interviewing you doesn’t look up or has a less than enthusiastic expression then it’s likely you will feel less confident in making the conversation work well.

In his classic work, ‘How to win friends and influence people’, Dale Carnegie said “If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm. When somebody calls you on the telephone use the same psychology. Say “Hello” in tones that bespeak how pleased YOU are to have the person call.”

A simple experiment
There are many ways to start to build confidence when communicating and trying new situations and will be covered here in future posts, but I would suggest an experiment over the next few days. When you meet someone you don’t know, smile warmly and make eye contact as you do so. Notice the way they react and then the way the conversation goes. A non- threatening way to do this is to try it out with a shop assistant or a colleague in a meeting. The key is not to worry about whether they smile back or to engage in a heavy discussion it’s about confidently trying something new and measuring the results.  Making this small behaviour change you will eventually change your feelings about meeting saying hello to new people.