Introduction

Some people try to accomplish too much in one day. I have gotten better at this. However, there are still times I push myself very hard. You may be wondering what you can do when you feel overwhelmed. I have learned the importance of having time for fun, getting plenty of sleep, exercising, and the importance of eating the proper kind of food.

If you don’t take care of yourself physically and mentally, you will become worn out and irritable. If you are feeling like you are under an enormous amount of stress, and you don’t take care of yourself, your symptoms would be even worse. You may end up getting very sick.

Some stress can motivate you. For example, you are working toward a deadline, and you are motivated to finish a certain project before the deadline. However, having excessive stress can cause you to feel tired all the time. This article will provide some stress management tips.

How to Cope

Before you work on finding ways to cope with stress or how to improve your situation, knowing what is causing you to feel overwhelmed will allow you to find effective ways to deal with one or more situations causing you to feel overwhelmed.

• Do you think the stress will go away after a specific period of time? If that is true, you may want to find a way to cope with it better during that time period. If you find the situation to be more permanent, you may want to address ways to cope and actions you can take to alleviate some of the stress.

• Do you think the stress will always be there? Is it due to a specific situation or is it related to your personality? Identifying the source of stress will help you address the issues creating stress in your life.

• Are you willing to take responsibility for dealing with stress? Blaming it on a situation or on other people may feel good temporarily. However, you will have more success in alleviating stress if you take responsibility for your actions.

Without changing the situation, you can relax your body, use your imagination to think of a peaceful place, or give yourself positive thoughts and affirmations to feel better about yourself.

How to Improve Your Situation

Here are some ways to reduce stress by taking action:

• Delegate your work. You can ask someone to help you get your work done.

• Become assertive. You don’t have to say, “Yes,” to every request for your resources (such as giving rides or allowing other people to use your computer) or request for your time (such as taking a friend shopping or helping your friend fix his car).

• You can make your to-do list smaller. My list is smaller so I have less stress. However, I struggle with the next tip for reducing stress.

• Do things that are important instead of focusing on things that are urgent.

• Do things that are difficult early in the day instead of the easy things. I struggle with this tip also. I am better at doing the next two things.

• Exercising. It helps you to clear your mind while building strength and flexibility in your muscles.

• Building a support network. Don’t bottle up all your feelings instead, and be open to feedback from other people.

• Modify your goals. Maybe your goal is a very high one. For goal setting, you may want to take steps toward your goal by making mini-goals. I am losing weight, so my mini-goals allow me to congratulate myself for progress when I achieve my mini-goals.

Conclusion

Too much stress is not good for your body. Part of taking care of yourself is making sure you aren’t under too much stress. You can also take care of yourself by eating right and having time for fun. When you identify what causes your stress and take responsibility for your role in the stressful situation, you will be able to determine the best ways to cope with the situation or the best ways to reduce stress by changing your situation or both.

The stress management tips in this article helped me to realize why I put off doing this article. I was working on things that were urgent before doing the things that are more important to me in the long run. I also tend to do the easy things before doing the difficult things. The urgent things were important, so I could have done some of those things after doing the more important things.

I enjoy working on goal setting, and I am very good at setting mini-goals. For example, I plan to become a social worker, so I set mini-goals such as different parts of the application procedure, and making a list of things to do toward my goal of getting admitted to a master’s in social work program. With losing weight, mini-goals are necessary, because I don’t lose 30 or 40 pounds overnight. Mini-goals help me to develop patience as I exercise and diet to become a healthier person.