Combat Chronic Stress: How Mindfulness Can Transform Your Life

Introduction by Think American News Staff

“Combat Chronic Stress: How Mindfulness Can Transform Your Life” highlights why you should take control of stress before it takes control of you. In a world where chronic stress is inevitable, ignoring its impact can seriously affect your health and well-being. This article shows how practicing the art of mindfulness—a powerful tool to bring your focus back to the present—can help you break free from stress and anxiety. By applying simple, actionable techniques, you’ll learn how to start living a more peaceful, balanced life.

We all know chronic stress has negative impacts on our health and well-being but are we actively trying to address the stress in our lives? We know that worrying is not an actual action or an approach to address the stressful situation we are experiencing but when we stop and think about it, we do not give ourselves permission to not have these thoughts and feelings, but what if we did? What if we become aware of these thoughts and feelings and could shorten the length of time we spend caught in that unproductive web. What if we are proactive and take purposeful steps in our daily lives to combat stress? How freeing would this be, how differently would our day and lives look and feel like?

There is a big buzz word out there called Mindfulness. There are several different definitions for this, but one that resonates with me is “the practice of intentional, non-judgmental awareness of moment-to-moment experiences.” Did you know that our thoughts spend most of their time in the future or in the past, but very little time in the present. Not only is this true but the thoughts of the future are often filled with fear and anxiety about the what ifs; and the thoughts of the past tend to be those negative memories.

When we intentionally bring our thoughts to the present moment, and we practice this regularly, we create new pathways in our brain that allow us to do this more easily and frequently. Dealing only with this moment decreases our stress as we are not applying our past experiences, fears and worries and projecting them into our future.

The trick here is to start to recognize when your thoughts are in the future or the past and re-direct them back to the present moment. There are some great YouTube videos out there on mindfulness with many different approaches to do this. Here are some examples:

Create a word that resonates with you that you can use when you find yourself not in the present moment. Perhaps your word is simply “stop,” mine is “be still.”

There is a technique where you engage your senses called 5-4-3-2-1. Stop and look at 5 things around you, 4 things you can touchh near you, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 that you can taste. This centers you back to where you are and distracts your brain from intrusive wandering. It is recommended you set aside 5-10 minutes each day to practice this so that it becomes a natural go to during the day. It gets easier and easier with practice.

The next piece of mindfulness is to be non-judgmental about the moment. In other words, clear any negative feelings you are having at that present moment, which may also be the trigger for wandering thoughts. What does this non-judgmental thought process look like? It is exactly what it says, take a moment to be free of any negative thoughts. Re-ground yourself so to speak.

I like to think of this as taking a moment to take inventory of what I am in the process of doing, what about the situation stresses me, what can I change right now to decrease that stress, if anything, and evaluate any actual threats.

Ok, now breathe! Taking a moment to pay attention to your breathing, take some deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Really breathe in until your stomach rises. We often breathe so shallowly, just into our lungs, but deep belly breathing is very beneficial.

There are so many wonderful things we can do to combat stress but first you must intentionally add this to your to do list, make it a priority so the other things on that to do list are less overwhelming. Here is a sample of stress busting ideas:

Start or end your day with a gratitude journal. Yep, we have all heard about it, but until you put it into practice you will never understand the benefits of it. Sleep is crucial. Getting 8-10 hours of quality, healing sleep is essential to your health.

Life/Work/Commitments Balance. We must always look at this balance and re-evaluate it often. It is so easy to get our lives out of balance. What can you cross off the list, or put on hold, or say no to? If you do not have time to be proactive on the stress in your life, you are out of balance.

Movement/Exercise—we all know that a sedentary life is unhealthy and purposeful movement combats stress. Do not overthink this, you do not need a gym membership or hours a day. Walk for 10 minutes every day, rebound for 10 minutes a day. Put on your favorite dance music and dance around your house. I combine rebounding and dancing to my favorite tunes on Spotify. No clumsy routines I cannot follow, no need to go out in the cold. Check out your local school, ours allows free access to our communitiy to use the inside and outside walking track, fitness center and the pool.

Toxic relationships that are left unaddressed take a toll on our health and well-being. While not easy, you may have to evaluate who you allow into your space and with what frequency.

A healthy diet is the basis for all health including your ability to manage stress.

Don’t confuse stopping wandering thoughts into the future with an inability to plan for things in the future that is not the same.

Be proactive in addressing the stress in your life. We are all going to have stress and tough times, this is a part of life. Learning to spend more of our time in the present moment and not the past or future can bring real peace.

Wishing everyone a less stress filled life!

Jocelyn Moglia is a Certified Functional Nutrition Counselor & Owner of True North Functional Nutrition

Learn more at https://truenorthfunctionalnutrition.co/