Tips for Dealing With Stress and Pressure

Are you having trouble dealing with the pressures from a job or from your life that are making you feel anxious and stressed out? If you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, I’ve got some simple and practical tips for helping you to feel less overwhelmed and to able to handle these pressures more easily.

When you follow these tips on dealing with stress you can feel calm, relaxed, and collected about things throughout your entire day.

making lists

Something that helps me personally a great deal is making lists. This may seem like more of an organizational or productivity tip.

However, it makes me feel like the pressure has been taken off just a little bit, which is why I include it in this list.

Writing things down, sectioning them off into categories really does help me feel calm. It kind of feels like I’m getting it out of my brain and onto paper, which allows me to feel less overwhelmed about all of the things that are up there that I have to do or feel pressured to do.

It helps me to see it laid out in front of me so that it’s a little more easily tangible. It helps me even to check the things off once I’m actually done doing that task.

It’s not just about productivity and organization is about literally getting it out of your brain onto something else, letting your brain breathe a little bit and allowing you to feel a little bit less pressured by the overwhelm of all of these things that you have to do.

My number two tip along the same lines. Once you’re done with your list, prioritize what on this list that you just wrote out of all of the budget things that you have to do, what which tasks on this list or which multiple tasks on this list will help you to feel better.

The most twitch thing is giving you the most anxiety about doing which task. Maybe it’s going to take the longest or take the most amount of in order to achieve it.

I would say do that first. Do the thing that’s due first. Do the thing that the deadline is coming up before the others.

Prioritize what you need to do before the others. Probably not to go for the most straightforward task first because you’re more likely to actually do the easiest jobs because you can always do them after you’ve done the more challenging ones.

Do the more challenging tasks that are due first or that are most important before, the easier ones and this way it’s done, and you can breathe and then do the more manageable tasks, maybe even at a faster pace.

eating the right way and staying hydrated during the day

The next tip that I’ve found to be super important to stay cool and calm is to make sure you are eating the right way and staying hydrated during the day.

They don’t appear to be connected. The body and the mind people think it’s separate, but you know what? They’re all in the same place. They’re trying to keep the same individual alive, so they work together.

If you’re feeding your body garbage, you’re feeding the body things that you know you shouldn’t be eating, that’s going to weigh you down, and first of all, it actually makes you feel more negative.

Second of all, it’s going to give you less energy, which will definitely not help your productivity, and when you’re not feeling productive, you feel even more pressure because you’re not getting things done. Then you need to get done.

Eat the things that make you feel your best, make you feel you’re most energetic. For me, that is whole foods, whole plant-based foods.

I have been trying to find a breakfast that gives me this amount of energy for years, and I finally discovered it, and it’s the best thing ever.

I get the most done during the days when I eat this for breakfast, and when you get more things done, you feel better, and you feel a little less pressure, or at least that’s been my experience. Also staying hydrated. Something that I always recommend. You need water.

You need to drink enough water, hydrate your body, or else you are going to feel terrible. On the days where I forget to drink water throughout the day, you really notice a difference. My skin feels dry, and my energy is low.

I’m always hungry throughout the day. I tend to snack more if I’m not drinking water, so definitely stay hydrated, eat the right things and this way you’re feeling at your best in order to perform at your best, which will help you to more easily managed pressures that you feel that you’re under.

deep yogic breathing

My next tip and this will probably come to no surprise, is deep yogic breathing. I’m a yoga teacher. Obviously. I’m going to talk about breathing deeply in my classes. I don’t think I need to count actually how many times I say breathe because it’s so important.

Taking a moment, especially if you’re feeling particularly anxious about something, maybe you feel like your heart rate is, is elevated at the point of where you feel uncomfortable. Take a moment, close your eyes and deepen your breath. Take a really deep breath in.

Feel your rib cage expanding and then take a deep breath out. You can release it out through your nose or your mouth, if that helps you feel your rib cage coming back in, fill your stomach coming back in, and if you’re confused by this, then yes, when you breathe, when you inhale, you need to feel your rib cage and your stomach expanding and when you exhale, you need to feel that all coming back in.

Slow deep breathing helps to lower your heart rate, helps to quiet your mind. It helps you to focus, and it’s especially useful if you’re feeling a lot of pressure in.

If you need more structure to practice mindful breathing, you can use a set of japa mala beads to count each breath.

You can buy yoga bead bracelets of 27 counting beads or Tibetan mala beads with 108 counting beads. If you want a shorter mindful breathing practice use the bracelet mala to count a set of 27 slow deep breaths.

You can wear the mala beads, so it is accessible whenever you have a spare moment to count some breaths.

don’t be so hard on yourself

My final tip for this article is don’t be so hard on yourself. I know easier said than done. I do it. Everybody does it. We all beat ourselves up way too much, way too often, but how I like to think of it sometimes is treat yourself as if you were someone else that you’re caring for.

Just think of it as if you’re caring for someone else, you are treating yourself with the kindness that you would handle someone else that you’re caring for.

Thinking of yourself in this way helps you to be a little bit kinder to yourself, helps you to be more understanding.

It helps you to understand that you’re only human and you need to give yourself a break. If you can’t complete the 700 tasks on your list, on your to-do list or that you have up in your brain that is understandable and okay, you need to be okay with that and just give yourself a break again, and it was a lot easier said than done.

I totally understand, but giving yourself a little bit of a break because if you’re feeling too overwhelmed, stressed, or pressured about things, you’re never going to get anything done because you’re not feeling well and you’re not feeling at your best.

Some people work better under pressure, but you need to be still calm and not have such anxiety about it.

I hope this article helped you to get some inspiration on how to deal with pressures in your life a little bit better, with a little bit more ease, maybe come out of it feeling less anxious.