12 Stress Beating Tips

12 Stress Beating Tips

Below are presented 12 tips to prevent stress and prevent burnout from a clinical specialist in mental health nursing.

1. Try to remain in control of your thoughts, feelings and behaviour – meditation can often be of great assistance.
2. When you begin to start the ‘worry’ process, deliberately make a conscious effort to change over to useful, more decisive thinking.
3. When you start to feel agitated, stress is on the horizon waiting to pounce, take good strong deep breaths and consciously relax.
4. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the other individual causing you stress, empathise with their position and try to understand why the stress is developing.
5. Focus on what you appreciate about the people you work with or family members and compliment them regularly. Not false flattery but genuine positive praise.
6. Try and identify and stifle negative, destructive thinking modes which can spiral you downwards emotionally.
7. Learn how to positively assert your personal position, know when to say no.
8. Engaging in brisk physical exercise is extremely good for your overall well being, physically and mentally and of course emotionally.
9. Always do your level headed best to treat everyone else with respect, how you would like to be treated yourself, seeking to bring out always, the best in others.
10. Maintain if you can a sense of humor, a sparkle of life in your eye.
11. Know when to leave your problems whether these be in the workplace or in the home, do not transfer these problems outside of their own arena.
12. Do today what must be done to realise the goal, do not procrastinate and put off until tomorrow, what can be done today.

The above 12 stress busting tips are an adaptation of “Dealing With Feelings, Beating Burnout,” by Ruth Dailey Granger, American Journal of Nursing, January 1992.

Those individuals that are fully aware of their own limitations and the limitations in others too, welcome help and assistance.  This emotional maturity pays dividends when experiencing stress or burnout, realising that one of the paramount keys to avoiding stressful situations in the first place, is knowing when to ask for help. A lot of people are afraid to ask for help especially when experiencing high stress levels for fear of rebuttal or not being taken seriously, or perhaps for fear that they may be looked upon as failing in their job at work. Not asking for help when needed though can lead to even greater problems, not only for you personally, but the entire team effort. Be it secular work, housework or college learning associated work, whatever situation is threatening you with stress or burnout – delegate work wherever you can so that everyone becomes a strong positive team player, by doing so you will usually end up with a much more positive atmosphere. It can be surprising with the right amount of delegation just how much the entire team can accomplish when this ethos is employed. There is absolutely no need for you to feel that you have to carry the whole burden of responsibility on your shoulders, all alone.

Another important stress buster is giving yourself the right amount of rest, not too much and not too little.  The same can be said for diet. Eating fast foods at work, snacking, chocolate bars etc, too much caffeine all of these can also contribute towards heightened stress levels.  Try your best to allocate proper time for breaks at work and at home and give your food time to digest properly.  Easier said than done sure, in many circumstances, all the more reason then when you are out of your work environment to allocate to yourself proper rest periods or ‘you’ time.