How to deal with stress

(gentle piano music) Welcome to Five Minutes to Change Your Life. My name is Joanne Mallon. I'm an author and coach, and I love helping people to make wee small changes that make a big, big difference. So if you give me five minutes of your time today, well, just might change your life. This week, I thought we could talk about stress. I've got a couple of episodes coming up later in the week, and I'm going to be sharing specific, stress-relieving tips that definitely work, and I know they work because these are things that I use myself. But first, I want to talk about stress in general, and how to approach it so that it doesn't become overwhelming for you. Now, stress is inevitable. You know, it's up there with death and taxes. It's just an inevitable, inescapable part of life. You will not get through your life without experiencing stress. Because even if your life was 100% sorted, and everything was good, and you love your job, you got great family and friends, and all that stuff, the wider world will still bring stress to your door for you to deal with. And of course, we've all seen that over the last few years with the pandemic, which has been and still is a worldwide stressful event. There's not one person on the planet who hasn't been touched by it. And regardless of whether you've had COVID or not, I hope you haven't, you would have to be made of stone not to be affected by everything that's gone on. Now, stress normally comes as a result of some kind of change in our lives. It's when we're put under pressure. But what is life about if not change? No two days are ever the same. Life is change. And so that really is why stress is so inevitable. It's always going to be there. It's not going away. Stress is normal. So we know this. And we also know that unfortunately, stress can lead to some quite serious physical illness. That's extremely clear. So what we need to do is find a way to deal with this normal everyday thing that stress is in order for it not to make us sick. So what I want you to think about today is what are the things in your life that have helped you to deal with stress in the past? Now, that's going to be different for everybody. It might be exercise. It might be nutrition. It needs some decent food. It might be spending time with friends or watching or listening to something that makes you laugh. Could be a hobby. Whatever it is, what I want you to do now is make a plan to include your de-stressors in your life on a more regular basis. Make them as everyday as stress already is. Do not wait for stress in order to de-stress. Charge up your batteries in advance so that when the next stressful time comes along, which it definitely absolutely will, you will be in a better position to deal with it. Get fighting fit before the fight is what I'm saying. Nourish yourself before the storm. Now, right now, if something I'm doing is a 30 days of yoga challenge with the Yoga with Adrienne channel on YouTube and it's a really nice calming way to start the day. So then what happens is I meet my day from a place of calm and I'm then better able to deal with whatever life throws at me. But yoga might not be your thing. Your thing might be painting or walking or gardening, playing a game. Could be anything. Identify your thing or things that help you feel calm and then make a plan to do it within the next week. And please, please let me know how you get on. I would love to know. I'd love to know what your thing is that helps you feel calm and de-stress. And before I go, just a final call for the free online event. I'm doing on Wednesday or if you're listening to this after Wednesday, well, you missed it. It was great. Never mind. It's called five minutes to improve your mental well-being. So it's the kind of stuff that I talk about here, but more of it. It's on Zoom, so we can see each other and I'll wave at you. And that's on Wednesday, the 19th of January. It's hosted by Trafford Libraries in the UK. Completely free. And they've said that anybody can come along. So I will leave a link to it in the show notes. And I'd love to see you there. Talk to you next time. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]