Dr. Aaron's Blog

How To Keep Your Calm Even When You Are Under Stress!

April 25, 2016 All, Healthy Eating, Naturopathic Medicine, Nutrition by Aaron Van Gaver

For all those out there who spend the majority of their days at a high stress job or those who are responsible for the stress that comes with going to school or raising children, keeping calm in a difficult situation can seem next to impossible. So how does one keep their cool when the world seems to be crumbling around them? By following these five helpful tips, of course!

1. Keep a Positive Attitude

This tip may sound cliche, but have you actually tried it? When challenges start to mount, it can be tough to stay positive. Once a negative attitude sets in, it begins to snowball downhill and before you know it, you’re feeling angry and frustrated all of the time. By maintaining a positive attitude in stressful situations and viewing obstacles as a learning experience, you have the ability to gain valuable perspective from stress, as opposed to letting the stress run roughshod over you.

2. Laughter Is The Best Medicine

Humour is one of the easiest ways to manage stress and while some of us may wonder how doctors, pilots, firefighters and the like manage to remain full of good cheer, it is not because they don’t care about the challenges that they face. It is because laughter is the best medicine, since it allows to handle stressful situations without letting them handle us.

3. Take A Step Back

There is nothing wrong with taking a momentary step back from a situation that is negative or stressful. It could be something as simple as taking a ten minute walk around the block, counting backwards from one hundred, or even watching a movie. By walking away and taking a step back, you’re able to decompress, get your thoughts and view the situation with a clearer mind. This pays huge dividends when you’re able to address the situation at hand without flying off the handle.

4. Asking For Help

While many are afraid to ask for help, being fearful about asking for assistance often makes a stressful situation worse instead of better. It takes a much stronger person to ask for help than it does to ignore the severity of the issue and try to shoulder it alone. There are always going to be people in your life who have knowledge that you do not and this is a resource that you need to be tapping into as much as possible.

5. Getting Rest

Stressful situations have a way of seeming far worse than they really are when we have not received the proper amount of rest. Sacrificing your sleep is not going to help you complete tasks more effectively and it will cause you to have a much shorter fuse than you would have normally.